


The False and the Fair

by Princip1914



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: A lot of sex in the second half, Agnes Nutter planned it all, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Americana, Appalachian Gothic, Appalachian Omens, Coal Mining, Flying, Genderqueer Crowley (Good Omens), Good Omens AU where Aziraphale was directly involved in Crowley's fall, HIV Positive Character, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Magic Realism, Melancholy, Mentions of Cancer, October Sky but make it gay and sad, Period-Typical Homophobia, Realistic AU, Rekindled Romance, Slow Burn, Slow burn in the first half, This is a story about healing, West Virginia, accidental bookshop ownership, farming, gratuitious descriptions of nature, not as grim as it sounds, spooky mountains, the Mid-Atlantic as a romantic destination, this would be a tragedy were it not for the happy ending, unhealthy alcohol use, yes in a human AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:54:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 120,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25944682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princip1914/pseuds/Princip1914
Summary: Growing up in the shadow of West Virginia’s Eden Mountain, Aziraphale Wright always expected to work for the family coal mining company. Anthony Crowley, the son of a down-and-out miner, was going to become a pilot and leave town forever. Now, thirty years later, neither of their lives have gone as planned, and an unexpected inheritance brings them back into one another’s orbit. Aziraphale hopes that they can move beyond their shared past, and a high school arrangement that ended in disaster, but he has secrets of his own that threaten their fragile reconnection…
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Hastur/Ligur (Good Omens)
Comments: 1154
Kudos: 291
Collections: Can't no preacher man save my soul, Good Omens Human AUs





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> As some of you know (looking at you GO Events server!) this story has been a long time in the making and I am very excited to share it with the world! 
> 
> This story is meant to be a realistic AU, so please mind the tags. I have tried to warn for all the major themes in the tags, but this is a long story and I am sure I have not tagged everything. Some chapters will have specific content warnings in the author's notes at the beginning. If you have any questions about why I have added a tag, or about particular triggers, please message me on [ on tumblr](https://princip1914.tumblr.com). I don’t want to spoil the story in the comments below, but I am more than happy to discuss via DM! Despite the rather grim looking tags, there are (I hope) many moments of queer joy to be found in this story, as well as humor and love and happy endings. 
> 
> This will be a long story (~38 chapters) and I will update once a week, unless I announce otherwise on [ tumblr](https://princip1914.tumblr.com). The E rating is for a handful of specific scenes--most of the story is very firmly in M territory. All E rated scenes will be marked off with a special cut for anyone who would like to avoid explicit sex. 
> 
> The title is from the excellent Townes Van Zandt song [Our Mother the Mountain](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFV2-7cgRo4), which appears, albeit a bit obliquely, several times in this fic. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy the story, and if you do, feel free to drop me a note!
> 
> I really love it when people are engaged with my work, but for this particular fic, please note I am **not** comfortable with remixes, podfics, translations, or other derivative works based on this story.

Seen from above, the Appalachian mountains are a wrinkle in the vast tablecloth of America. The neatly pressed plains of the midwest give way to bunched, rolling hills, then smooth again eastward to the glittering flat expanse of Chesapeake marshes.

These mountains are older than the Rockies to the west, although much lower, worn down by the passage of time and, more recently, human intervention. Once, aeons ago, there was an ocean over this land and when it dried up, it became a wet, boggy marshland where grasses and plant and animal life flourished and died and were buried under layers of rock and clay.

For three centuries, men have been hard at work exhuming this ancient life, burying themselves in the process. The landscape is dotted with the remains of their successes and failures—sinking, hissing, open pits in the ground, black water bubbling from the tap, churches and schools carried on mudslides a mile down the hillside, whole mountains with their heads blown off. A pilot, flying low over the remains of these rugged mountains today could be forgiven for thinking that they were flying over the surface of the moon. 

But It was not always like this. The hills of Appalachia bloomed—and still bloom—in the spring, teemed with life. Waterfalls flowed down the mountains’ green backs, cougars and black bear preyed on the deer that grazed in the evening meadows, trout the length of a man’s forearm swam in the streams. When Joe Wright, cutting through heavy brush in an attempt to rejoin his regiment, turned the corner of a mountain pass and looked down on the glittering valley spread out below him, he fell to his knees and wept at the beauty of the land. It was 1863. A ragtag group of men followed him, less than half a platoon. There was a war going on that they were meant to be fighting, the country raging around them, but here was a corner of paradise they would not leave for generations to come. Joe Wright dug his fingers in the dirt by his knees, stuck his hands in the side of the mountain and they came away dark with the dust of promised riches. 

A word for this land existed in a tongue that was not English, but the people who knew it by that name had all been pushed westward or else perished in the roaring tide men like Joe called progress. Joe Wright did not have their language and so he called the valley by the only name he knew for pristine beauty. Eden.

More than a hundred and fifty years later, a hawk or a pilot soaring over Eden Mountain would see its unnaturally flat top, scarred and blind. From Eden, a creature of the skies might circle higher, riding the thermals in the gathering dusk until it seemed the whole state of West Virginia, the entire ridge of the Appalachian mountains, from Georgia to Maine, was laid out below. At such a height, the hillsides look whole again, green and unbroken in the twilight. All along this knobby spine, the red lights of windmills wink on, one by one.


	2. A Will and a Way Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big thank you to [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile), whose perspicacious eyes greatly improved both this chapter and the previous one!

Far from the mountains of Appalachia, in the cramped back office of a warehouse halfway between Washington DC and Baltimore, Aziraphale’s phone began to ring. Aziraphale was so absorbed in his task he barely noticed, only startled out of his reverie by the sound of his own voice on the ancient answering machine.

“Hello, you’ve reached Bayside Architectural Salvage and Antique Restoration, our hours are Monday through Tuesday 10am to 2pm, Wednesdays 2:30 to 4:30 pm, Thursdays…”

The phone number blinking on the machine began with a 304 area code. Aziraphale dropped the brush he was using to painstakingly reapply gold leaf to a 19th-century mantelpiece and scrambled for the landline.

“Hello,” he said, cutting himself off before his recorded voice reached the widely variable Saturday hours.

“Is this Mr. Aziraphale Wright?” The voice on the other end was unfamiliar. Kind but officious.

“Yes indeed, this is he,” Aziraphale tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder and reached again for the paintbrush. “I’m terribly sorry, but if this is about demolition or salvage, I’m afraid we’re only licensed in Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, and the District of Columbia, I can redirect you to another excellent engineering firm in Parkersburg if you—”

“That won’t be necessary Mr. Wright,” the woman interrupted. “I’m from the Eden Country Records Office. I’m calling regarding the last will and testament of one Ms. Agnes Nutter.”

***

Aziraphale stood on the gravel sidewalk in the fading light for a long time, keys heavy in the palm of his hand, before he crossed the street to the bookshop and unlocked the door.

The drive had been uneventful. The roads unspooled before him empty and familiar in the afternoon light. Interstate 295 to the Beltway, then 70 West from Fredericksburg, which became 68 West and slipped through a deep gash in the mountains, layers of rock rising on either side of the road like a gate. On the way down the mountain from the cut, the rain had started, a driving sheet that barely cleared with Aziraphale’s windshield wipers on the fastest setting. Just as soon as it had come, it was over, and Aziraphale found himself in West Virginia, mist rising like smoke from the deep dells on either side of the road, the mountains towering above the highway like hulking shadows in the last light of the May evening.

Aziraphale had driven to West Virginia exactly once a year for most of his adult life, a straight shot on 68 all the way to Gabriel’s neatly manicured mansion in suburban Morgantown. He always stayed for exactly three days—Christmas Eve, Christmas, and the day after. Now, for the first time, since he was a teenager, he took a different exit towards a place that once, long ago, had been home.

Eden was so small it didn’t even appear on the highway sign. Driving slowly through downtown now, it was clear that if Eden had changed at all in the past thirty years, it had only changed for the worse. The Woolworths where Azirapaphle remembered buying his new school clothes every August had been boarded up so long ago that the plywood itself was warping and peeling. The only open restaurant was the McDonalds he had passed on the way into town. The only open store on Main Street was the liquor store. A few men hung around the entrance smoking. Aziraphale could feel their eyes following his white SUV with its Maryland plates.

The flag at the police station had been taken in, but the blue light at the entrance was on. Aziraphale rapped on the door politely and a large man in a sergeant’s uniform shambled out from behind a corner to open it. The man’s eyes drifted up and down Aziraphale’s form, from the cut of his slacks, to his velveteen waistcoat and pocket watch chain, all the way up to the bow tie knotted at Aziraphale’s neck. Aziraphale wished he had thought to change before the drive, resisted the urge to pull at his collar or twist the signet ring he always wore around his pinky finger.

“Can I help you?” the sergeant asked.

“I called ahead,” Aziraphale said. “I’m here for the keys, for Ms. Nutter’s shop?”

“Oh,” the man’s expression cleared. “Oh, you’re the Wright boy, Gabe’s brother. Come on through then, this way.” He held the door for Aziraphale.

“When were you in school?” the sergeant asked over his shoulder, as Aziraphale followed him inside.“‘82? ‘83? Might have overlapped with my big brother, Sandy, you know him?”

“I graduated in ‘85,” Aziraphale gave in to the impulse to tug on his bowtie. “And yes, Sandy and I were on the team together, I do hope he’s well.”

“Sure is. He’s on the force now, same as me. Stationed in Charleston. Got two kids, daughter’s getting married this fall.” The man dropped behind a desk to rummage in the drawers. Aziraphale looked down at his balding head and tried to remember if he had known that Sandy had a brother. A vague recollection swam into his mind of a kid who sat in the bleachers with Sandy’s mom at home games and was always wiping his nose on his shirt.

“Lovely.” Aziraphale said, looking around at the white walls of the station. An insect buzzed sudden and loud against the overhead fluorescent light.

“You should look him up.” The sergeant stood and deposited a set of keys on the metal desk with a jangle. “I could get you his number? I’m sure he’d drive over to catch up, grab a beer or three, laugh about old times.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, picking up the keys. “That’s very kind of you, but I won’t be in town long. Should I sign for these?”

“Nah, no need.” The sergeant waved a hand. “So you gonna sell the shop then?”

“Most likely.”

“Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you. Not much been done to it in terms of repairs. Even when Agnes was around, she didn’t pay it much mind. Hired some artsy type from up in the mountains to come do work on it once in a while, that was it. She was too busy with all that _environmentalism_ , those big ideas of hers.”

“So I’ve heard,” Aziraphale said, edging as politely as possible towards the door, but the sergeant was still talking.

“Damn fool of a way to die,” he shook his head. “All over the newspapers, TV, everything. You hear about it all the way down in—” the sergeant eyed Aziraphale’s clothes again.

“DC,” Aziraphale said. “And no, but I—they told me at the inquest.”

“Damn fool,” the sergeant said again and stood, following Aziraphale to the door and unlocking it to let him out. “Caused your brother a whole lot of headache, I’m sure. But she had style, I’ll give her that. What a way to go out.”

Back in his truck, Aziraphale let out a deep breath and reflexively tugged on the hem of his waist coat, smoothing out the wrinkles. Past the police station, the closed shops on Main Street petered out into a row of dark houses and then there was nothing but the gravel sidewalk, the rush of the river that flowed down the mountains into town, and the imposing silhouette of Agnes Nutter’s shop at the end of the road.

That such a place existed here in Eden was incongruous. Aziraphale had felt so even as a child. The grey slag dust that floated through town when the breeze was wrong had never seemed to stick on the steep gables of the bookshop. The colonnaded entranceway, the spiral staircase inside, the ornate stained glass windows and heavy stone walls had always felt magical and mysterious to Aziraphale. It was the kind of place one could get lost in for days—three stories and a basement and countless back rooms to explore—a world away from the clapboard houses and dilapidated front porches in the rest of town. Now, with the eyes of an adult, even in the twilight, Aziraphale could see that the bookshop had had better days. The paint peeled on the trim; a handful of the slate tiles had fallen off the roof and lay scattered upright, like tombstones, in the grass all around.

As the light faded, the crickets sang and fireflies rose out of the long unweeded grasses by the river. Aziraphale weighed the keys in the palm of his hand. It had rained here too and the wet asphalt steamed. The sound of the river rushed through the air and thunder rumbled, distant and ominous as lightning flashed far away above the hills. Aziraphale took a deep breath of the country air. Wet earth and honeysuckle and something else sweet and delicate and long forgotten hung on the breeze. He squared his shoulders and walked across the road and up the steps.

The heavy door creaked open. Inside was dark and musty with the smell of dust and old books. Aziraphale flicked a switch and an art deco glass orb by the door flared to light, casting everything in an orange glow. It was almost exactly as he remembered, down to the piles of dusty books haphazardly stacked on the tops of bookcases and on either side of a central aisle leading into the cavernous recesses of the shop.

Agnes had told him once that the shop used to be a library, a long time ago, built by Andrew Carnegie himself—one of only three in the state. At the time, Aziraphale had been more interested in hiding out after football practice and immersing himself in other worlds, and the name had hardly meant anything to him. Now, however, he ran his hand over the old familiar wood of the door frame with a practiced touch. He had deconstructed old libraries and shops and places of learning often enough in the past thirty years. He walked through them with the contractors, labeling particular elements of marble or wrought iron or wood with pieces of colored tape that spoke to their final destinations. Thus the antique balustrade of a public library in Richmond that was being bulldozed for condos had become a part of the Italian embassy in DC; the marble from the front steps of the library in one of the first black colleges in Maryland had gone to the National Park Service to repair the Washington Monument; the ornately curled reading lights from a schoolhouse in Ellicott City had furnished a mansion renovation in Roland Park. Aziraphale knelt on the smooth slate floor of the entryway, and thought about many other slate floors, too many to count, broken up and divided, scattered across three states and one district like the wreckage from a plane crash.

Aziraphale liked his job well enough. He liked that it was not a waste, either of the materials or of his engineering degree, which he had obtained out of deference to his family with only the vaguest notions of a career to follow. He liked that everything was used in the end, nothing old and cherished was tossed away or discarded. He liked the word salvage and he especially liked restoration and he liked both salvage and restoration much better than demolition. He didn’t ever stay for that part. He poured over old catalogues—1905 Corning Glass, 1898 New Orleans Iron Co, 1920 Chesapeake Lumber and Materials—and pieced together clues, matched up serial numbers, examined the marks made by particular kinds of nails. He could, with one glance, identify if a particular piece of timber had been cut by a mitre saw or by hand, could date a parquet floor to the nearest decade by inspecting its joins, could point out the age and provenance of half a dozen kinds of brick nearly indistinguishable to the untrained eye. Aziraphale did his job with the painstaking thoroughness that had earned him a reputation in certain very specialized circles, he attached the pieces of tape, and then he walked away. What happened afterwards—the cacophony of falling rubble, the imprecise and blunt force of crowbars tearing through old wood—was unfortunate but inevitable. He consoled himself with the thought that such destruction was a necessary, if distasteful, part of saving beautiful things from ruin.

Here, however, Aziraphale feared ruin had already set in. In the hazy light of the glass orbs he turned on, one by one, as he moved through the shop, it was painfully obvious how much needed to be done. Aziraphale noted mold on the ceiling, broken window panes, and peeling paint in the corners of the rooms. At least one step in the majestic iron spiral staircase that circled upwards to the eaves had rusted out entirely. Aziraphale hovered his foot over the gap left by the stair, then turned back, deciding to leave the dubiously sound upper floors for daylight hours. On the way out, he flicked off the lights again, unwilling to trust the ancient wiring. He made his way back out to his truck for his suitcase, and up a much sturdier set of wooden stairs at the front of the shop to Agnes’ old apartment. 

Another key opened the door to Agnes’ living space, but Aziraphale didn’t need it—the door was already unlocked. Inside, everything was neat and orderly, but somehow still had the impression of having been recently rifled through. Perhaps it had—after all, Aziraphale had read that the FBI had been involved briefly. In fact, this was why it had taken more than six weeks for the will to be opened and read.

Aziraphale paused at Agnes’ desk, a lovely roll top antique that looked (although he would have to examine it closer) to be a genuine product of Cutler Desk Company, probably late 19th century, 1910s at the latest. He slid open a drawer, and then another. Each of them was, as he had expected, empty. But if the FBI had been here, Aziraphale doubted that they had found anything. Agnes wasn’t the type to engage in criminal terrorist conspiracy, and even if she was, she was absolutely not the type to get caught if she hadn’t been planning on it. A sudden pang of loss went through him, so fierce he had to walk the three steps to the queen bed by the window and sit down on the bare mattress. He had barely known Agnes Nutter, really, beyond the vaguest impression of a woman who was as kind as she was terrifyingly perceptive, and who would take zero bullshit and would give none in return. He hadn’t thought of her in years, not until the county clerk had called. He hadn’t properly grieved her—not even when he made the impulse decision to use his months of accrued time off and come up here for the summer to sort things out, not in the two weeks he had taken to pack up his condominium and put everything in storage, not even on the drive through the mountains. He hadn’t grieved Agnes because he hadn’t known he needed to. Agnes had been larger than life and it had been hard, until now, to believe she was really gone.

Agnes had been very fond of making pronouncements. Years ago, in this very shop, just down the stairs by the cash register, Agnes had rung up a book for him—a particularly special first edition of Leaves of Grass—and then met his eyes with her steely grey gaze. She looked at him over the top of her spectacles and said: “boy, life may not always be easy for you, but you can always come here. Someday, you’ll need to.” 

At the time, Aziraphale had thought she was referring to, well—he had thought—it didn’t matter what he had thought. If he had noticed something all those years ago, a little nod of recognition, a few hints dropped casually offhand, he had been too terrified of it to acknowledge it. Now, looking at a photograph of Agnes on the bedside table, laughing and young, arm slung around the shoulders of another woman, he suspected he had been right. He lay back on the bare mattress and wondered if Agnes hadn’t meant what he thought thirty years ago at all, but had instead meant now. _You can always come here. Someday you’ll need to._

Did he need to come here? He was happy, relatively speaking, in his rented condominium. He was happy in the backroom of the warehouse, cobbling together broken pieces of the past into something whole and useful. He had avoided spending any more than three days a year in West Virginia for the past thirty years for good reason. 

Aziraphale rolled over on his side and got up off the bed and wandered over to the window. He cracked it open and sweet country air rushed into the musty room along with the sound of the river and the cicadas, loud in the trees. He hadn’t wanted to come back to West Virginia, but maybe a small part of him had missed it, even after all these years.

Well, Aziraphale thought, inhaling the sweet breeze, it was just for the summer after all. It wouldn’t hurt to make himself at home. He opened his suitcase and shook a crisp set of sheets onto the bed, before he moved through the little apartment to the kitchen, where the cabinets were still full of Agnes’ handmade crockery and a bookshelf groaned under the weight of homemade pickles and preserves. The herbs growing in a planter in the kitchen windowsill were vibrant and lush. He wondered idly if someone else had a key or if one of the FBI agents had watered them on their way out.

He took a cup from the kitchen to the bathroom, perched his toothbrush in it on the edge of the sink, installed his medicines and razor in the old-fashioned cabinet set into the wall behind the mirror, and set about readying himself for bed. The bookshop creaked and settled around him as he pulled the sheets, which still smelled of his apartment in DC, up to his chin. Aziraphale had spent the majority of his career in and around old places and the thought of ghosts didn’t bother him—he did not believe in them. He had, however, learned to pick up on and trust the energy that hung around old buildings. Agnes probably would have called this sense something dreadfully new age like vibes. The bookshop felt well-loved, cherished. In the window by the bed, Aziraphale could see the shadow of Eden Mountain watching over the shop. Unbidden, a memory floated to the surface of Aziraphale’s mind—a hand moving in a long, dark arc across the night sky, pointing out the outline of the mountain. The flash of a smile beneath golden eyes, almost luminous, in the night. The smell of cut grass and peppermint soap. 

With some effort, Aziraphale pushed the thought away. It was a reminder of why he had avoided Eden for thirty years. It was the scar of an old wound not worth reopening.

***

In the morning, Aziraphale went hunting for breakfast. Besides the McDonalds, there was one cafe in town, a small diner, just up the road from the shop. The teenager working behind the counter seemed vaguely familiar. Like everyone else in town, she had the face of someone Aziraphale had known once a lifetime ago.

“Are you Morgan Tackett’s daughter?” Aziraphale couldn’t help but ask.

The girl wrinkled her nose at him. “Excuse me, but do I know you?”

“Pardon me if this is terribly rude, but,” Aziraphale dabbed at his lips with his napkin. “I think I went to high school with your mother.”

She held out her hand. “Pippin Galadrial Moonchild Tackett. But you can call me Pepper, everyone does.”

She looked to be barely fourteen, but her grip was firm and confident. “I’m Aziraphale, Aziraphale Wright.”

“Wright, like Wright Mining Corporation?”

“It’s, ah, the family business,” Aziraphale said delicately. “I’m not involved.”

“Good thing, those mines have ruined this place, the environmental pollution from them has been destroying my childhood, I’ll tell you. I’m probably going to have terrible health problems when I’m sixty because of it, do you know we all drink bottled water now. My mom says the well water’s no good anymore. I can’t tell the difference myself, although I suppose it does smell a little funny—”

Aziraphale listened, a familiar sort of pang tight in his chest.

“—-and I wrote an editorial about it for the school newspaper, but they wouldn’t publish it because all the funding for the newspaper comes from donations from about five different mining companies, all across the state, Wright Corporation included,” Pepper finished up. 

“Do you tell all your customers this?”

“No,” Pepper grinned at him, “only coal executives I’m trying to run off the land.”

“Well, there’s no danger from me I assure you,” Aziraphale pushed his plate away and she took it. “I’m only here for the bookshop.”

Pepper dropped the plastic plate with a clatter. “Ms. Nutter’s shop! Do you...are you...do you run it now? Did she give it to you? Did you know her?”

“Yes, she was very kind to me when I was in high school.”

Pepper’s eyes had gone wide as saucers. “Will you tell me about her? She’s such a hero, I couldn’t believe it when I heard—”

“I didn’t know her very well at all, I’m afraid,” Aziraphale apologized.

“But she knew you well enough to give you the bookshop? Wow. Did you know they shut down all the mines in Harrison County for six weeks because of her? I heard she caused nearly a million dollars worth of damage. The feds came and everything, there was a whole investigation and that led to another investigation, which led to something about tax fraud—I’m still trying to get the details right for the paper—anyway, apparently the Pine Mountain mine might even be shut down for good. What a sacrifice she made. What a sacrifice she made for us all.”

Aziraphale stared into the eyes of youthful fanaticism and coughed delicately. “She was an amazing woman, I’m sorry she’s not with us anymore though.”

“I heard she had a cancer diagnosis,” Pepper said. “Doctors gave her six months to live and she went out and did something with them like a fucking hero. Sorry, Mr. Wright,” she ducked her head. “For the cussing I mean.”

“I’ve heard worse,” Aziraphale stretched and finished the last of his coffee. “Young lady, you wouldn’t happen to know where I could find the number for a contractor or a handyman? Agnes was involved in so many things, I’m afraid she let the shop go a bit.”

“Oh, well,” Pepper shrugged. “Agnes didn’t have a lot of help. Not very popular with people around, I’m sure you can imagine why. But there was someone who came now and then to fix up the real problems in the shop. Don’t know who, just sometimes saw the truck out front. Agnes kept all her numbers in a little index card file by the register, might be in there? I watched her put my number in there,” she said proudly. “She said she’d call me if she had anything for the school paper.”

Aziraphale paid for his breakfast and thanked Pepper, then headed back down the hill to the bookstore. It looked even worse in the daylight, dust motes hanging in the air, rodent droppings visible in between the books on the shelves. Agnes’ apartment itself was spotless, but she clearly hadn’t kept up with the shop at all.

An ancient rolodex sat on the register just as Pepper had promised. The FBI agents hadn’t taken it, although it did look like some cards were missing. Agnes had a tab labeled “Justice” with subsections behind it for “Environmental,” “Racial,” “LGBTQ,” and “Other”, and another entire section labeled “Dirty Coal-Biggest Players.” The index cards behind all of these tabs were, predictably, entirely cleared out. Aziraphale sat behind the desk and settled in for a long morning of flipping through the remaining cards, but as he shifted the rolodex to his lap it fell open of its own accord to a tab labeled simply “Repairs.” There was only one card behind the tab with no name, only a number, scrawled in Agnes’ somewhat shaky hand. Aziraphale fished his ancient brick of a cell phone from his pocket and dialed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're curious about the drive Aziraphale does here, the cut in the mountains is a real place called [Sideling Hill](https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/back0210.cfm), there's a little museum and everything!


	3. A Blank Slate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for betaing this chapter! 
> 
> CW: discussion of parental death and cancer

Aziraphale was halfway through pouring himself a glass of freshly-made lemonade when the shop’s front door buzzer sounded. He picked up his drink, threw the kitchen towel over his shoulder and wandered downstairs.

“Hang on, hang on,” Aziraphale said, to the silhouette hovering outside the frosted glass of the door as he fumbled at the locks one handed. “Here, just let me—”

With some effort, he wrenched open the heavy door. He raised his eyes to the tall man on the doorstep and the glass of lemonade slipped out of his hand, shattering on the concrete porch. Sticky liquid splashed over the tips of worn snakeskin boots. Shards of glass scattered like diamonds all over the entryway.

Aziraphale and the other man both bent at once to clean the mess. Aziraphale registered only snapshots of the jumbled chaotic few seconds that ensued: the blood red crescents of painted nails, a whiff of something earthy and familiar even after all these years, layered over with the scent of laundry dried in the sun, and peppermint soap, the brush of long fingers against his own as they both scrabbled for the same piece of glass—

“Ah,” Aziraphale gasped, straightening up.

“Are you alright?”

“Just a cut, it’s fine—”

“Here, let me see—”

Aziraphale snatched his hand away, pulled the dish towel off of his shoulder, and pressed the blooming pain of his sliced finger against it, willing the blood to clot and congeal, willing the rabbit quick beating of his heart to slow.

“Don’t you want to check to make sure there’s no glass in it?”

“I'm sure it’s fine,” Aziraphale said, clutching the towel harder. “Really.”

Crowley—for it was Crowley on the porch, undeniably, unexpectedly, incontrovertibly Crowley, as sure as if Aziraphale had summoned him last night in his dreams—shrugged expressively. “Suit yourself.”

Aziraphale couldn’t stop staring at Crowley’s hands, the painted half moons of his nails. 

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said. “About the lemonade. I do hope your boots will be alright.”

A flash of red as Crowley waved one hand. “They’ve seen worse.”

Aziraphale’s cut finger throbbed against the dish towel. A bee buzzed over and flitted around the splatter of lemonade on the stone, the small noise of its flight the only sound on the porch.

“It’s been a while,” Crowley said into the crushing, awkward quiet.

“Almost thirty years.”

Crowley was wearing sunglasses. Behind them, his face was unreadable. The two pools of black covering his eyes were encased in elegant tortoiseshell frames that looked too delicate to be men’s fashion. He had a tattoo on the left side of his face, a curling serpent that only partially obscured the angry lines of an old scar before disappearing behind his glasses.

“You look—” Aziraphale said, then struggled for an appropriate way to end the sentence. The truth was, Crowley looked good. He looked almost exactly as he had looked when they were eighteen, although his fiery red hair was longer than it had ever been, swept up into a half bun and greying at the temples in a way that made him appear distinguished rather than old. He was as skinny as ever, but his shoulders had filled out a little, and his hands were tanned and calloused above his painted nails. His dark jeans were tighter than they had any right to be. “—well,” Aziraphale finished, finally, aware that it had been too long of a pause, horribly embarrassed at his shocked reaction to Crowley here on his doorstep, at the frumpy waistcoat and bowtie he was still wearing—he hadn’t yet had the heart to change into one of the new shirts he had just bought at Walmart—at the blood dripping into the dish towel in his hand.

One corner of Crowley’s mouth quirked up, an expression so intimately familiar even after all these years that Aziraphale felt hollowed out just at the sight of it.

“You do too,” Crowley said. “Look well I mean.”

“Thank you,” Aziraphale was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that they were still standing on the porch. “Oh, where are my manners?” He held open the door and stepped to the side. “Why don’t you come in?”

“Sure,” Crowley walked in confidently. His gait, if anything, had grown even more of a swagger since the last time they had seen one another. Crowley had been here before, many times, of course. They used to come here together, back in high school. And Crowley had known Agnes, too, at least as well as anyone ever had.

Aziraphale trailed in his wake, still trying to process Crowley’s presence. He didn’t know what Crowley was doing here. He didn’t know what he himself was doing here, in this bookshop, in Eden, in the state of West Virginia rather than in his comfortably cluttered office off of Interstate 295 between Washington and Baltimore. Aziraphale was terribly uncertain, and so he defaulted, as he always did, to politeness.

“Would you like anything to drink? There’s more lemonade? It’s fresh squeezed.”

There had been minute maid lemonade in the refrigerated section at Walmart, and powdered mix in the soda aisle, but Aziraphale liked doing things by hand. He found it soothing. He’d collected half a dozen hobbies over the years; cooking, woodcarving, knitting, tying artificial flies out of feathers and deer hair and other specialized materials, which he sold to a fishing shop in DC. It was nice, letting his hands work while his mind drifted.

“Thank you,” Crowley said, and followed Aziraphale upstairs to the little apartment.

“Plants are doing well,” he remarked, trailing one long finger over the herb box in the kitchen windowsill as Aziraphale busied himself with the pitcher of lemonade.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said absently, “someone must have been in to water them.”

Crowley took the glass Aziraphale offered him with an odd look on his face. “That was me. I did the watering. Agnes gave me a key, when she got sick. I can give it back to you now though, I hope it’s not odd for me to have it—”

“Oh,” Aziraphale murmured, an aching sort of feeling in his chest that might have been relief, might have been disappointment. When Aziraphale had seen Crowley on the doorstep, for one wild moment he had thought Crowley might have heard he was in town, come here for him. But he had not summoned Crowley here after all. “Oh, that’s why you came by today, for the plants.”

A frown appeared between the black pools of Crowley’s glasses, which he had not taken off even though they were inside.

“I came because you called me,” Crowley said and the rabbit thump of Aziraphale’s heart started up again faster than ever. Crowley dug in the pockets of his tight jeans—how he could fit anything in there was anyone’s guess—to produce a sleek black phone. He tapped at it and Aziraphale’s voice came out of the speakers.

“Hello, this is Aziraphale Wright. I’m calling from the bookshop on Main Street. Agnes left me your number and well, I was hoping, if it’s not too much trouble, you might be able to swing round to help with some repairs on the shop? I’ll be around all day today and tomorrow—”

Crowley’s elegant index finger clicked the message off.

“ _You’re_ repairs. I should have _known_.”

For the first time since showing up on the porch, Crowley looked wrong footed. “You didn’t?”

“No, Agnes just put a number down on a card, nothing else I’m afraid.”

“Oh.” An expression crossed Crowley’s face like a cloud, fleeting and partially obscured by the dark glasses. In the split second before his features smoothed out again he looked—hurt. 

“I’ve just got to—” Aziraphale gestured with the dish towel still wrapped around his hand and fled to the bathroom.

He put his cut finger under the tap of the small sink and tried to take deep breaths as the red-tinged water ran down the drain. A small first aid kit in the medicine cabinet yielded band-aids. Aziraphale blotted his skin dry and wrapped three around the cut, with shaking hands. Of course he had known Crowley still lived in Eden, or assumed he did anyway—it wasn’t like they had been in contact. And Eden was a small town, a very small town. He ought to have known Crowley would turn up eventually. But still, it had been such a shock to see him there on the porch as if no time had passed at all, as if he was waiting for Aziraphale to pick up right where they left off.

(But time had passed, the mark of time was right there on Crowley’s face, the dark glasses, the snake, the scar—

And time had passed for Aziraphale too. He had changed as well. It would be impossible to pick up where they left off.)

Aziraphale shut off the tap and met his own blue eyes in the mirror. They stared back at him, guilty and afraid, the eyes of a coward. 

(Aziraphale hadn’t changed at all.)

When Aziraphale came back to the kitchen, Crowley was seated at the table, sipping his lemonade and drawing aimless circles with one long finger in the ring of condensation on the tabletop. The sun streaming in through the window behind Crowley backlit his hair like a halo, made his angular face look soft. He turned his head towards Aziraphale and smiled that same lopsided grin. Aziraphale briefly considered turning back around to hide in the bathroom.

“Patched up then?” Crowley asked, waving his own fingers.

“Yes, indeed.” Aziraphale attempted a smile. _I could be in my office in DC right now, he thought. I could have paid an estate firm to handle this property. It’s not too late, is it? I could make a run for it, grab my car keys, and be out the door and on the highway in ten minutes—_

“Do you like the lemonade?” he asked. 

“S’good,” Crowley said, then gestured around the kitchen. “Looks like you’re moving in.”

Aziraphale took in the groceries half put away on the counter, the Walmart bags piled on the floor spilling over with new clothes—half a dozen plain polo shirts in neutral colors that Aziraphale liked well enough, as well as two pairs of formless work jeans, purchased with a suppressed shudder. A new wardrobe to avoid attracting the wrong sort of attention in a place like this.

“I don’t think so,” Aziraphale said despite the evidence. “I live in DC now. I’m only planning to stay for the summer. Just until I can get the bookshop sorted. Agnes left it to me, can you imagine?” Aziraphale let out a high, nervous sort of laugh and immediately hated himself for it.

“Yep, I heard.” Behind the glasses, Crowley’s face was unreadable.

“So how about you?” Aziraphale swallowed, willed himself not to rotate the signet ring around his pinky finger. “Is this your…do you work as a contractor these days?”

“A handyman? Nah…I mostly farm. Just did odd jobs for Agnes here and there.”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, you must have known her well.”

Crowley sighed and leaned back in his chair, the long line of his body unspooling in the afternoon light. “Did anyone really know Agnes well?”

Aziraphale chuckled at that, and Crowley did too, then they were both laughing. Crowley wiped at his right eye under his sunglasses.

“God, I miss her,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale moved to sit across from him. “Me too. I hadn’t talked to her in years but—”

“She had a way of getting under your skin, didn’t she?” 

“She did indeed. It was so awful, what happened.”

Aziraphale hadn’t been here, hadn’t even known about it until the county had called him six weeks later—apparently some kind of FBI approved waiting period—but he could imagine it all too well. A still March morning. Blue sky with the birds wheeling through it. And then; the mountain shattering, footsteps running, doors slamming, the long slow wail of the siren starting up from the mine—

“You don’t know the half of it,” Crowley murmured. “But, she died for something she believed in. I—I respect that. I don’t think she was wrong. I want you to know that, I don’t think she was wrong.” He said this with a defiant set of his jaw as if inviting Aziraphale to disagree.

“What part of it don’t I know?” Aziraphale asked instead.

“Before…before the end, well, she didn’t have family, did she? It was just me and her for a while. And she was really sick.”

“Breast cancer, wasn’t it?”

Crowley drew in a sharp breath. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry. My dear, I’m so sorry. That must have been—”

“Yeah,” Crowley’s fingers went back to drawing on the tabletop. Those nails, those red nails.

“How is your family?” Aziraphale asked, then bit his tongue. Not a question likely to rescue the conversation.

Crowley snorted. “Not much of it now, is there? Bee’s off in Davis. Married a man who runs a ski slope out there in the winter. Luke drove off the side of the mountain two years after you got out of here. Truck was totaled. He was too.”

Aziraphale opened his mouth but Crowley held up a hand. “Don’t. You know what he was like.”

“My father died as well,” Aziraphale said. “He had a stroke five years ago at his retirement community in Florida. And my mother never—” Aziraphale’s breath caught, briefly in his throat. He didn’t understand why it was still so hard, after all these years. “—never did write or call again.”

“You got a—” Crowley regarded him through the black lenses of his sunglasses, settled on “—partner?”

Aziraphale shook his head.

“Both on our own then, I guess.” Crowley didn’t mention Gabriel. Neither of them did.

“So,” Crowley drained his glass of lemonade, set it on the table and stood. “What sorts of things did you want me to look at?” There was something tense in the line of his body, another question hovering under the one that was voiced aloud. _Do you still want me to do the repairs, now that you know it’s me?_

“Let’s go back downstairs,” Aziraphale stood too. “I’ll show you.” Crowley’s posture relaxed into his familiar languid slouch. 

Aziraphale followed Crowley down the staircase, watched Crowley’s narrow hips as they swayed ahead of him and told himself ferociously, _I haven’t thought of him. I haven’t wondered about him._

“Agnes didn’t really keep the old place up,” Crowley said over his shoulder. “I kept telling her I would do it for free, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Just wanted me to keep the apartment nice for her, said the bookshop would take care of itself like an ecosystem. She had a lot of strange ideas.”

“She did, didn’t she.”

They walked through the first floor of the shop, Aziraphale pointing out half a dozen things he had noticed already that needed fixing. “I’m sure there’s more besides all this. I’ve only been here a day, I haven’t had a chance to check everything.”

Crowley hummed in response and squatted down to get a closer look at a mouse hole along the wall. Aziraphale looked down at the graceful arch of Crowley’s back. _I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him. I’ve thought about him incessantly, constantly, even before the phone call, for years and years—_

“Listen, it will take days to do all this stuff,” Crowley said, standing and dusting off the knees of his jeans. “And some of it, like the wiring problems, I won’t be able to do. You’ll have to contract an electrician.”

“I’m sure you know people in the area.”

“Yeah, I can probably find someone.”

“Would you be so kind as to do an estimate for me? Time, costs, that sort of thing?”

Crowley’s mouth had gone just slightly slack. “Yeah,” he breathed, then, “gosh, I hope this isn’t weird to say, but you sound exactly the same.”

“What?”

“ _Would you be so kind_ , it’s exactly how you talked in high school. I don’t know anyone else who talks like you.”

“Crowley.” A tight knot had formed in the pit of Aziraphale’s stomach. He thought again of his car keys, resting on the upstairs bedside table, thought of excusing himself, taking the keys, walking out the front door and leaving this place forever. But he couldn’t. Agnes had trusted him with the shop. He owed it to her, at least, to see this thing through. To see it renovated and sold to someone who would stay and care for it properly. 

“Crowley, if it’s acceptable to you, might we just…start over?” Aziraphale asked after a too-long pause. “Etch a blank slate? Growing up here was—difficult for me. I’d rather we didn’t talk about the past.”

Crowley looked nonplussed. “Yeah, ok. If that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

“Well then,” Crowley scuffed a toe on the bookshop floor. The awkwardness had settled over them again like snow. Crowley fiddled with the arm of his sunglasses. Aziraphale wished terribly that Crowley would take them off. He hoped to God he would not.

Finally, Crowley cracked a smile. “Agnes would enjoy that you know.”

“Enjoy what?”

“A blank slate. She was always more about predicting the future than thinking about the past. Anyway,” Crowley moved towards the door. “I’ll write something up for you. Tomorrow ok to start work?”

“That would be wonderful.”

Aziraphale steeled himself for the press of Crowley’s fingers in his own, but Crowley just waved him off without a handshake. He locked the door behind him and went upstairs, feeling strangely bereft. He drifted to the window, watching from above as Crowley sauntered out to a lime green antique Ford truck parked on the gravel. Aziraphale was just turning away when Crowley pulled his phone from his pocket and, squinting at the screen in the bright midday sun, raised his sunglasses. On the left side of Crowley’s face, the snake tattoo curved inwards over a mess of scar tissue. Where there ought to have been an eye there was nothing but stretched, whorled skin and ink, a blind socket covered by sinuous tattooed scales.

_The slamming of a heavy metal door, the whirr of an electric motor, the whoosh of helicopter blades in the evening air—_

Aziraphale flung himself away from the window. The air in the room felt thick, contaminated. He sucked in shuddering breaths and stood with his back against the kitchen wall waiting for the shaking in his limbs to subside. He stayed there, trembling, as the sound of the truck starting drifted up from below, stayed there long after the noise of its engine had faded away into the distance.

***

The next day, Aziraphale was ready. Ready for the crunch of tires on the gravel of the bookshop parking lot; ready for Crowley, sauntering out of the lime green pick up, eyes covered by the sunglasses, in the same tight jeans and snakeskin boots. Ready for the red nail polish. Unfortunately he had not anticipated Crowley’s dark undershirt, hand-cut into a scoop neck style that showed off his collarbones and just a bit of chest hair in a way that Aziraphale considered distinctly unfair.

Aziraphale had slept fitfully the night before and made twice as much coffee as usual to compensate. He offered Crowley a mug, which he took gratefully.

“Hope wasn’t too long of a drive” Aziraphale said, watching as Crowley took a sip.

“Not at all. Just about twenty minutes. I live in a little holler up by Bethlehem creek. It’s not much, but I own my own land,” Crowley continued with a hint of pride. “Not just the surface mind you, what’s underneath it too.”

“Do you like it up there?”

“Like it well enough,” Crowley’s lips quirked up into that half smile. “I’ve got a garden and chicken and goats. The kind that have hair you can spin into cashmere. Nice pond out back too. I still swim most mornings in the summer.”

(The smell of chlorine and humid air. A whistle, the long delicate arc of Crowley’s body. A familiar nameless hunger as Aziraphale watched the pull of Crowley’s shoulders, the reach of his arms.

“Can’t meet up with you,” Crowley had said earlier, brusque, as they were packing up from class. “I’ve got the county swim meet today.”

“Well, good luck then.”

Aziraphale had pretended not to care. He had pretended not to care as he drove snowy backroads to a YMCA with sweating, hospital green walls and cracked windows, as he watched Crowley surface in the pool and turn to look up at the time on the scoreboard, water rippling off his back. Aziraphale would leave before Crowley’s golden eyes could catch his, would ask him later, feigning disinterest, “how did it go?”

“Came in third,” Crowley would shrug and lean over Aziraphale to look at the problem in front of him. “Didn’t make states, but it’s for the best, Bee’s hours got cut and I should take more shifts…”

Aziraphale would breathe in the scent of chlorine and peppermint soap from Crowley’s hair and later, in the darkness of his bedroom, pretend not to be thinking of it as he moved his hand beneath the covers—)

“Got a little greenhouse where I start apple seedlings, which pretty much pays for the farm,” Crowley said, oblivious to the direction of Aziraphale’s thoughts. “Apple picking was the first thing I did after—” he gestured towards his sunglasses. “Helped come up with a new variety of tree that does better in the soil here. I ship them all over the state now. The apples are really good. I’d bring you some but they aren’t ready until September.”

“I’ll probably be gone by then,” Aziraphale murmured into his coffee, wondering at the casual way Crowley’s hand had fluttered up to his face, at how easily his red mouth skipped over the words _the first thing I did after._

Crowley spent the rest of that day tearing up rotted baseboards near a pipe that had sprung a leak, replacing them with fresh lumber that left the deep smell of oak hanging in the air. Agnes did not have a dishwasher; Aziraphale washed the coffee mugs in the sink. He hesitated a moment on Crowley’s, wiping his soapy thumb in a long arc over the lip of the mug.

***

Crowley came by again on Thursday, and then on Friday, working through the long list of projects in the shop. Aziraphale tried his best to leave Crowley alone while he worked, but the man had his own unquantifiable, maddening sort of gravity. 

Each day, despite his best intentions, Aziraphale fell into Crowley’s orbit. Crowley announced he was going to replace the crown moulding in one room and Aziraphale suddenly recalled seeing a first edition of _Tom Sawyer_ in the same room that urgently needed to be appraised. Crowley hauled his tools into the downstairs bathroom to fix the plumbing and Aziraphale, just by chance, remembered he ought to replace the soap and clean the mirror. He polished it to a shine and then kept right on polishing it as Crowley knelt beneath him in the small space, cursing and muttering about different kinds of stop valves, but not once complaining about the presence of Aziraphale’s shins mere inches from his back. Crowley picked his way up the crumbling wrought iron staircase to assess the water damage on the third floor and Aziraphale thought it was as good a time as any to begin cataloguing the books in the shop, moving, naturally, from the top down. 

The upper reaches of the bookshop were musty. Crowley’s snakeskin boots kicked up a small cloud of dust with each step, left a shining trail of bare floor behind them which Aziraphale followed. The stained glass windows were as dirty as the floor. It was a sunny day outside, but up here it was perpetual twilight. There was something mystical and a little spooky about the space. It felt timeless. Were it not for Crowley’s dark glasses, for Aziraphale’s rounded middle, for the age that had settled into the tanned skin on the backs of Crowley’s arms and the lines on Aziraphale’s forehead, they could still be in high school. In the half-dark, Aziraphale saw the flash of Crowley’s grin before he flicked on the lights and knelt to begin examining the floorboards. Of course Crowley would like it up here. 

Aziraphale turned to the books. There was no discernible order to them, Greek tragedy shelved with new age mysticism, a stash of pulpy erotica shoved into a corner with the Bronte sisters and a farmers almanac from 1995.

Every now and then that afternoon, and in the days that followed, Aziraphale came across a book that was a first edition or otherwise rare, but most were worth very little. Aziraphale didn’t know what he was going to do with the books he could not sell. He couldn’t stand to throw them away, so he carried them down the spiral staircase in his arms and piled them up in the corner of one of the first floor rooms instead. He didn’t know what he was going to do with the shop either. Refurbish it and then what? A bookshop in a town like Eden would never be a profitable endeavor. But the mysterious, musty, twisting shelves had impressed themselves deep on Aziraphale as a teenager and even with his many years of professional experience in architectural salvage, he could not imagine the building as anything else.

Gabriel, who stopped by uninvited on Saturday morning, had no such compunctions.

“Wow, you could do so much with this,” he enthused, tapping on the glass orb of one of the art deco lights. “I mean, you’d have to get rid of all this old stuff, but you could make it into loft apartments or a hotel or something. I’m serious. I bet you could get big money for this old place. West Virginia’s really becoming a tourist destination these days. Tourism’s the next big thing, after coal of course, or at least, that’s what the market analysts in the old firm tell me. Want me to ask my real estate guy what he thinks?”

“No thank you,” Aziraphale folded his hands behind his back, twisted the signet ring on his finger. Gabriel moved further into the shop. His bulk was the wrong size for the narrow corridors between the shelves. He knocked several books to the floor, picked them up, put them back out of order.

“Well, I guess you’re the expert. This sort of thing is kind of what you do now, right. Salvage and restoration? I imagine that’s why Agnes left it to you?” There was something lurking in Gabriel’s question, an unexpected current beneath the placid surface of a river.

“I haven’t the faintest why she left it to me,” Aziraphale said.

“Good, good.” Gabriel was holding a book in his hand, wasn’t looking at Aziraphale. “I’d hate to think you were caught up in all that unpleasantness. Bad business all around. I’m sure you’ve heard that several of the Pine Mountain pits are still closed. They had major losses all of last quarter.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Aziraphale murmured dutifully.

“Well, at least Wright Corporation is doing well as always,” Gabriel said, his somber mood melting away as if it were never there. He dropped the book he was holding to the floor and wiped his hands on his jeans. “Aziraphale, it’s so dusty in here, I really don’t understand why you want to stay here. Are you sure you don’t want the spare bedroom in my house? It’s only fifty minutes away.” 

“Thank you, but I’m quite happy here.” 

The offer--the third time Gabriel had made it in the past half hour--struck Aziraphale as somewhat barbed, although he couldn’t quite say why. Perhaps it was how he said, _fifty minutes away_ , the implication that Aziraphale was actually quite nearby, that he ought to have visited Gabriel already. Probably a good younger brother would have done so, instead of passively waiting for Gabriel to make the trip to a ghost town where nothing--no money, no coal--remained except for memories.

Aziraphale took a deep breath and reminded himself not to be ungrateful. Gabriel was only being nice after all. Gabriel had only ever been nice to Aziraphale. He’d been very kind after everything had happened, had said things like, “take as long as you need,” and “we understand if you want to spend a few years working somewhere else” and “you’ll always be welcome back whenever you like.” Except Aziraphale _hadn’t_ been welcomed back, had he? Aziraphale had asked, years ago, a carefully drafted email saying that he was ready to rejoin the company. Gabriel hadn’t written back, but weeks later Aziraphale had gotten a note from his secretary, a form letter that began: _Thank you so much for your interest in working for Wright Mining Corporation. Unfortunately at this time_ … and went downhill from there. Aziraphale hadn’t asked again. 

As if he were reading Aziraphale's thoughts, Gabriel smiled and said, “I was going to call, but I always like delivering good news in person. I’ve been meaning to tell you; there’s a position opening up at the firm. We’ve got a company historian job. I think it would be a great fit for you buddy, lots of looking at antiques, writing up little informational descriptions for a new museum in Morgantown. Have you given any thought to coming back?”

Aziraphale’s lips felt numb. The air of the bookshop was dusty and close. _I ought to open some windows_ , he thought wildly. _Maybe then it would be easier to breathe._

Gabriel was still standing there, head cocked to the side, waiting for an answer. 

“I didn’t realize that it was an option,” Aziraphale said. “Coming back.” 

“Of course it’s an option, you’re one of us!” Gabriel gave Aziraphale’s shoulder a friendly punch. “It’s time to put the past behind us, don’t you think? So much has changed about mining in the past thirty years. We’d be happy to have you back on board. It doesn’t feel right, having you so far away in DC. We’re a family company after all.” 

“I’ll—I’ll take it into consideration,” Aziraphale mumbled.

“Great, well,” Gabriel made a show of checking his watch. “I’ve got to head. I know what you’re thinking, working on a Saturday—” he gave an exaggerated sort of grimace, “—but the coal isn’t just going to miracle itself out of the ground, now is it?” 

Aziraphale pulled at the collar of his new polo shirt and tried to smile at the joke. 

“Anyway, it's great to have you back in the state Aziraphale! Let me know if you want to talk to the company realtor,” Gabriel said over his shoulder, already moving towards the door. “And think about what I said, about the job.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said, but Gabriel was already gone, the heavy door of the shop slamming shut behind him. 

***

On Monday, a full week after Aziraphale’s arrival in Eden, Crowley was back and with him the rain.

“Gosh it’s wet out,” he said, hauling in a bucket of tools. The tarp on the back of his pickup flapped in the wind and thunder rumbled from behind the mountains.

“Yes, there’s been a leak upstairs,” Aziraphale wrung his hands. “I tried to see where it’s coming from and I put buckets underneath it, but oh, it’s coming down so hard outside, I’m worried the floorboards will be ruined and the books on the floor beneath them too—”

“Let me take a look.” Crowley put a steadying hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. The sudden contact was warm and shocking, even through the heavy cotton of Aziraphale’s shirt. It was the first time, Aziraphale realized with a jolt, that Crowley had laid a hand on him in thirty years. The moment stretched, the touch lingered and then Crowley was pulling away, two spots of red high on his cheekbones beneath his sunglasses. Must be from the wind outside, Aziraphale reasoned. 

He led Crowley up the winding wrought iron staircase at the back of the bookshop, skipping over the handful of steps which had rusted through completely. On the third floor, a small waterfall cascaded down from the lip of a ceiling tile.

“Let’s take this off and see—” Crowley said, striding over to the leak. He reached up to the tile, fitted his clever fingers—nails painted dark blue this week—beneath the edge. Thunder cracked, ominous and loud, as Crowley pried up the ceiling tile and disgorged a torrent of water onto his head and shoulders. The weight of the water knocked his sunglasses to the floor, soaked his t-shirt. 

It was raining in earnest now inside the shop through the hole where the ceiling tile had tumbled down. Crowey blinked his one golden eye at Aziraphale through the falling water and Aziraphale—helpless in the path of that gaze—remembered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> p.s. Agnes' bookstore is based on a real West Virginia Carnegie Library that became a bookstore and is now unfortunately closed. It was a truly magical place. You can find pictures of what it used to look like [ here](https://www.flickr.com/photos/26691718@N00/sets/72157623205676083/)!


	4. Summer, 1984: Aziraphale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for wading through miles of conditional tense in the beta process and helping me wrangle multiple time periods. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has left kudos, messaged me, commented, or otherwise expressed enthusiasm for this story. I really appreciate your kind words!

_I'd stay in the garden with Him  
'Tho the night around me be falling  
But He bids me go, through the voice of woe  
His voice to me is calling_

_And He walks with me  
And He talks with me  
And he tells me I am His own  
And the joy we share as we tarry there  
None other has ever known._

It was raining then, too. A soft, muting sort of rain that fell through the trees with a gentle patter and turned golden in the sunlight still lancing through the clouds. The kind of rain that would inevitably bring a rainbow. Aziraphale stopped at the top of the ridge to scan the horizon but didn’t see one.

Around a bend in the road, a boy who looked to be about Aziraphale’s age was walking on the shoulder in the gravel. He was barefoot. His boots were cradled in his hands. Aziraphale caught up to him easily. 

“Why aren’t you wearing your shoes?”

The boy looked up. His eyes were the same color as the sunlight falling through the trees. Most of Aziraphale’s memories of growing up in Eden were hazy and blunted, some kind of self defense mechanism he supposed, but not this one. He could still see Crowley’s eyes as if it were yesterday, remembered it now—although he had not realized it then—as the first time he had ever found another man beautiful. 

***

A month after meeting on the mountain road, those same eyes winked at Aziraphale across the AP Calculus classroom in August. Aziraphale helplessly crossed the room to sit next to Crowley, a moth towards flame, a deer in the headlights, and asked, “you again? What are you doing here?”

“Can’t a country boy be interested in higher mathematics?” Crowley smirked, twirling his pencil around his fingers in a complicated, dexterous little motion.

“You were in my English class too.”

“I’ve got a full AP course load this year,” Crowley said, and he was smiling with his mouth but his eyes were prickly, his eyes were saying, _ask me again what I’m doing in all AP classes, ask me again and this time don’t imply it, say it outright—you think I’m headed for the mines after this year. Ask me why I’m wasting my time._

Aziraphale met Crowley’s eyes then, as he would meet them countless times that year, as he would meet them in his dreams for the next thirty or so years.

“Good thing,” Aziraphale said, “we’ve already gotten to know each other.”

***

Standing on the side of the road in the light July rain, the boy shrugged. “Boots got wet. They were giving me blisters so I took them off.”

This seemed like such an odd yet practical response that Aziraphale laughed despite himself. The boy met his eye and threw back his head and laughed too.

“Where are you headed?” Aziraphale asked.

“Home from the mine,” the boy said.

“Oh, me too.”

They walked next to each other for a while in the gentle mist. Aziraphale was pleased. They were coming from the same place. Perhaps this boy had an internship like Aziraphale’s. Perhaps they could help one another. It was only the first week and Aziraphale was already dreadfully, helplessly lost, deeply afraid he had already done half a dozen things wrong. But even as he thought this, with a sidelong glance he took in the too-short hems of the other boy’s jeans, the patched denim overshirt and white undershirt with a collar stretched out by countless washes, the lack of a tie, the bare feet and his over-large boots in his hands, and he understood they were not alike at all.

The other boy glanced over at Aziraphale too, sizing him up.

“Hey,” the boy stopped short on the gravel. “Haven’t I seen you around? You’re Mr. Wright’s brother, aren’t you? I’ve never heard of someone like you walking home. Never seen it neither. Don’t you usually drive a truck?”

“Well…I…” Aziraphale stuttered, stopping too.

“No, you do, I know you do! Big boxy sort of a thing, bright white, brand new. Company truck, right?”

“Yes, well…” Aziraphale looked around at the empty, steaming road, and dropped his voice. “If you must know I lent it out. But don’t spread it around.”

“Lent it out?”

“Look, you know Adam Primer? The foreman on Crew B? His wife is expecting, she was supposed to have the baby days ago, but she called the office this morning and said to tell Adam she was having contractions and it’s such dreadful weather and Adam doesn’t have a car and the hospital is all the way in Morgantown—”

“What did your brother think of you lending the truck out?” the other boy interrupted

“Gabriel? Oh, he um…well, the thing is—”

“He doesn’t know?” The other boy’s eyebrows had climbed practically to his hairline.

“Like I said, please don’t spread it around,” Aziraphale said wretchedly. “I’m worried I shouldn’t have, only I couldn’t stop thinking about poor Mrs. Primer having her baby on the kitchen floor. But maybe it was a mistake to give Adam the keys. In fact, I’m sure it was a mistake—”

“It was a kind thing to do,” the other boy cut him off again, looking at Aziraphale so intensely that a small furrow had appeared between his unusual eyes.

“Oh, I’m sure anyone would have done what I did. I just hope Adam brings the truck back alright.” Aziraphale pulled at his tie under the weight of that warm gaze and started walking again.

The other boy trailed after him. “You’re kind,” he said. “What’s a kind person like you doing at Wright Mining Corporation?”

“Oh, it’s not interesting, really,” Aziraphale muttered. 

“I’m interested, honest.” 

“I’m doing an internship. I’m supposed to be learning about mining technology, engineering, those sorts of things.” Aziraphale waved a hand, vaguely concerned that even a week in he couldn’t provide much more detail on his job description. So far, it had mostly consisted of running coffee and lunch to the accountants and actual engineers, but just today Aziraphale had caught sight of a stack of problem sets with an alarming post-it note—staple for intern—on Gabriel’s secretary’s desk.

***

“You know it would be easier if you just let me do that,” Crowley said in September, pulling Aziraphale’s sheaf of papers across the desk towards him. “You’ve got this all wrong, the angle of repose is supposed to be 30 degrees, not 60—”

Aziraphale snatched the papers back. “I can’t have you do my work for me, that’s cheating.”

“Fine then,” Crowley sat back with his arms crossed and feet out on the desk in front of him as the other students settled into chairs all around them. “Maybe I just get tired of seeing you walk in here like a whipped dog every day you get a problem set back covered in red pen.”

“I’m getting better. It’s just…it’s just I can’t stand the idea of you helping me, getting nothing in return.”

And then Crowley’s eyes kindled and gleamed and he lifted his feet off the desk in front of him, unrepentant about the smudges left behind by his dirty, ragged boots. “Aziraphale, what if instead of letting me do your work, I were to suggest an arrangement that helps us both…?

***

“Do you want to run a mine someday?” The other boy asked as they trudged along.

Aziraphale considered the question. “I don’t see why not. My family thinks the internship will help me get into engineering school, and then I can come back and become a part of the business the way Gabriel did, when my father retired.” 

The other boy snorted, an ugly, irreverent sound.

“Don’t laugh,” Aziraphale bristled. “Family’s important you know. They’re all expecting me to help. Gabriel can’t run things alone forever.”

“Family’s bullshit. My dad didn’t want to go to work today, but someone had to.”

***

This was what Aziraphale was supposed to do: 

Three days a week, Aziraphale would leave school at 12 noon in the white company pick up, excused from afternoon classes for his internship, and return sharply at 4pm for football practice. Those three afternoons, and Sunday afternoons too, Aziraphale would sit at a cheap plywood desk in the corner of Gabriel’s large office in Administration Building Number One. Every Sunday, the Chief Engineer Uriel, a slim unsmiling man, would lay a sheaf of papers on the desk in front of Aziraphale—jobs for the week ahead. Every Sunday, it would be Aziraphale’s task to comb through a stack of mouldering cardstock files, to look at each employee’s record of behavior and productivity and seniority, to consider which men had worked most recently and which men could be laid off for a week without fuss; and he would assign some men to the well-paid jobs deep in the mountain at the coal face, and others to the conveyor belt or the dusty slag heap. It was a complicated calculus that could not be learned in any AP class. It was a mathematics in which Uriel and, indeed, Gabriel were entirely uninterested; the arithmetic of human lives. 

Aziraphale would make the rosters for the week then he was to copy them over onto special triplicate paper. Aziraphale would bring the yellow copy of the roster downstairs to Peter in Accounting. He would bring the pink copy of the roster across the coal yard to the low, smoke filled building which housed Dagon in Personnel. And then Aziraphale would walk back across the yard, back up the stairs to the large corner office and file the last copy—the original white sheet—in a cabinet behind his desk. 

Aziraphale was not to look out the window at the miners milling around in dusty, threadbare overcoats waiting for Dagon to post the list on the mouse-eaten bulletin board outside Personnel. He was not meant to notice how many more men there were than jobs; more men, it seemed—and fewer jobs—each passing week. He was to fill out the roster in triplicate. He was to deliver the copies. He was to return across the yard. He was to ignore the hungry gaze of those loitering by Personnel, which gnawed at the back of his pressed white church shirt and nipped at his polished Sunday shoes. He was to go up the stairs in Administration, file the paperwork and be done. He was to spend the rest of the day on problem sets drawn from common coal mining engineering challenges. He was to turn the problem sets in to Uriel by the end of the week. 

This was what Aziraphale did: 

On a crisp October afternoon, Aziraphale sat at the plywood desk and Uriel arrived with the list. Aziraphale searched the stack of cards and pulled out the one stamped “Anthony Crowley.” Anthony Crowley’s card had a mark in the top right corner that indicated he was under eighteen and had not completed his MSHA certification, making him ineligible for all but the lowest paying jobs. Aziraphale took a penny out of his pocket and held it in the palm of his hand. Uriel was nowhere to be seen. Gabriel was on the phone and not looking in Aziraphale’s direction. The penny shone in the fluorescent light of Aziraphale’s desk lamp, a pale echo of Crowley’s hair in the sun. The mildewing cardstock scratched easily under the hard metal. Aziraphale hummed to cover the noise, one of the hymns from church that morning. It was the work of seconds to entirely erase the mark, to brush the small curls of paper that came away under the penny’s edge off of his desk, to shuffle the card back in with the others.

 _And He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own_ , Aziraphale hummed, and assigned Anthony Crowley to a job at the coal face—the deepest and most dangerous part of the mine, the seam which split the mountain in two, where all the money was to be made.

From then on, every Sunday, Aziraphale sat at the plywood desk and found Crowley a job in the heart of the mountain. Always a weekend shift or a graveyard shift, nothing between the hours of 8am and 3pm, nothing that would interfere with a high school schedule. Then, Aziraphale mimeographed the problem sets. On Monday he passed the mimeographed copies to Crowley in class, who completed them. They met in secret and Aziraphale copied Crowley’s answers from the mimeographed sheets onto the original paper problems in his own hand. He turned them in by the end of the week. Gabriel, Uriel, and the rest were none the wiser. 

Crowley called it variously: playing to our strengths, being smart about things, lending a hand where needed, and The Arrangement. Aziraphale called it utter foolishness. 

“You must be insane,” Aziraphale had said when Crowley first laid it all out for him. “We’ll be caught at once. You’re still seventeen, no certification--what if a mine safety inspector visits while you’re on a shift? There will be a fine for sure, and that’s just the best case scenario. If Gabriel finds out I’ve tampered with the cards and the roster, it will be terrible for me. And if the union finds out you’ve been taking a job from more senior men it will be even worse. You’ll get in awful trouble, and so will I.” 

Crowley let Aziraphale talk without interrupting, then smiled slowly. “All that is just if we get caught. No one has to know.” 

Crowley was hanging by his hands from the cross beam of a rusted crucifix. The note he had pressed into Aziraphale’s hand by their lockers that afternoon had directed Aziraphale to an intersection of two roads without names just uphill from a mouldering complex of mobile homes. Crowley had met him there, grinning, and led him into the woods. 

“Gonna show you one of my secret spots,” Crowley had said. “You won’t tell, will you?” 

The church was high on a bluff overlooking the river and town below. It had been abandoned to the mountain years ago; the outside so covered in virginia creeper and kudzu vines, Aziraphale didn’t know how Crowley had discovered it. The cemetery was pockmarked with hissing sinkholes, the aisle was full of weeds; goldenrod and queen anne’s lace growing up through the twisted floorboards. 

Aziraphale remembered the rest of that October day in pieces, an indelible montage, clear as the autumn sky, even thirty years later. A leaf drifting down through the ruined ceiling of the church, catching in Crowley’s short red hair as he did a pull up on the old altar. “I’ve told you I’ve got an in with Hastur, and he _is_ one of the mine safety inspectors. I’ll keep a low profile. And you said yourself, Gabriel and Uriel never check over your crew assignments anymore. No one will notice.”

“Would you stop that?”

“What?” Crowley grinned and did another pull up and another and Aziraphale watched the bunch and shift of the wiry muscles in Crowley’s arms.

“It’s sacrilegious,” Aziraphale said after too long a pause, after too long watching.

“No one comes up here anymore, not even God. We can meet here and no one will notice us working together.” A pause, another pull up, the crisp smell of October air drifting through the woods. “I’ll teach you how I did the problem sets after I do them, that way it won’t be cheating. How does that sound?”

“I suppose when you put it like that…But it’s still too dangerous, all the way down there on the coal face. Wouldn’t you rather be near the conveyor belt where the roof and walls are reinforced?”

Crowley grinned at him, crooked, eyes smiling. “You worry too much.”

Aziraphale sighed, and sat down on one of the remaining pews that hadn’t been broken up and carted off for firewood years ago. Crowley looked at him like he knew he had won.

Crowley sat next to him on the rotting, off kilter pew. Crowley’s hand took the sheaf of papers from Aziraphale’s unresisting grip. Crowley’s eyes flicked over the page. When Aziraphale thought of this moment later, as he often did in the years that followed, he remembered the concentrated furrow of Crowley’s brow, the slight smell of his sweat and peppermint soap when Aziraphale leaned closer to peer over his shoulder at the equations unspooling in his looping, careless hand. _See here you’ve got to expand the quadratic before you do anything else…_

Aziraphale remembered Crowley’s eyes darting, quick as minnows, up to Aziraphale’s face, the slanted weight of his gaze that did not ask any questions but already knew too many answers.

***

Aziraphale looked at the other boy again, more carefully this time, saw how he ought to be half a head taller than Aziraphale himself, but his shoulders were slumped and drawn in tight as he walked. It was the walk of someone who hadn’t yet learned how to move underground, who wasn’t yet used to crouching for eight hours or more in the dark.

“First day?” Aziraphale asked.

“Yep. But I’m not going to make a habit of it.”

“No?”

“I’m getting out of this town in a year. Graduating high school, then I’m gone.”

***

In the first week of class, Aziraphale glanced over at Crowley’s notebook as they sat side by side and Mr. Tyler droned on about Riemann sums. On the inside front cover, Aziraphale saw a list of dates and prices and asked Crowley about it later, as class was ending.

“It’s nothing,” Crowley said.

Two weeks after that, Crowley was waiting at the entrance to Agnes Nutter’s shop, lounging on the porch like a cat when Aziraphale parked outside, still sweaty from football practice. Silently, Crowley followed Aziraphale inside. Aziraphale didn’t dare look at Crowley, unable to decide if he was frustrated or elated to have been found out in one of his hiding spots.

Crowley hovered behind him in the eternal twilight of the musty upstairs, pretending to peruse ancient Greek poetry.

“Have you ever flown in an airplane?” He asked, apropos of nothing.

“Sure, I have.”

“I’ve done it once.” Crowley was always sardonic, always hard to read, never serious. But his eyes gave him away. His eyes lit up when he really cared. They glowed in the gloom of the upper reaches of the bookshop when he told Aziraphale, for the first time, about flying. 

“At the state fair and they had an old biplane, the kind with two sets of wooden wings and a propeller on the front and the pilot took me up for a flight. Aziraphale it was like—it was like—I can’t describe it. It was like nothing else in the world.”

Aziraphale had been to the state fair that year, along with half the football team and two thirds of the cheer squad. He remembered barely sparing a second glance at the plane, thinking it was hardly worth the price to fly in one looping circle for ten minutes above the mountains. Hearing Crowley’s rapturous voice describe the flight, in hushed detail as he loitered in between copies of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Aziraphale wondered if Crowley had been high above while he was below on the ferris wheel. Aziraphale wondered if Crowley had looked down to see him dithering about putting his arm around Cindy Cooper’s shoulders, or buying her a funnel cake—he hadn’t in the end, done either—if Crowley had been watching as she flounced off in a huff. Then Aziraphale wondered why he was wondering.

“So that’s what it’s about, all the dates and numbers in my notebook,” Crowley said. “It’s about flying, it’s about getting out of here for good. I’m keeping track of everything I’ve got to do. All AP classes senior year, already doing that. Then, I’ve got to take the SAT next weekend in Morgantown, that’s fifty dollars plus the bus fare to get there. And the application is due in December—another fifty to send that off—and if I get in, I have to do a medical exam and a fitness test in March.”

“Where are you applying?” 

“Air Force Academy.” 

“Air Force?” Aziraphale asked, surprised. He thought of the ratty _Dead Kennedys_ t-shirt Crowley was always wearing (“It’s punk rock,” Crowley had said when Aziraphale had asked. “Anti-establishment. Of course you haven’t heard of them, you’re way too square,” and then refused to answer when Aziraphale had asked what _that_ meant), the hand drawn anarchy symbol on his backpack. 

Crowley looked at him defiantly. “You think it’s a bad plan, don’t you? Bee thinks it’s a bad plan, she thinks I should just get my union card like the rest of them.” 

“I don’t think it’s a bad plan, but, the military? Really?” 

“Yeah, well,” Crowely shifted away from Aziraphale, leaned against a bookshelf. Aziraphale hadn’t realized how close they had been standing. “You only have to stay in for four years after you graduate. Don’t tell anyone, but I plan to dismantle the military industrial complex from the inside.” 

Aziraphale laughed and Crowley laughed too and then Crowley stopped laughing. “Not everyone has a lot of options you know.” 

The aftertaste of Aziraphale’s own laugh was bitter in his throat. “You’re going to be an excellent pilot,” he said. 

And then he stepped back into Crowley’s space because Crowley was still leaning away from him, still aloof, and Aziraphale couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand that he’d caused Crowley to think he didn’t _care_ “Tell me about it? Tell me about why you want to fly?” 

Crowley’s eyes kindled in the dark upstairs of the bookshop and he leaned in again, “d’ you know, it’s the shape of an airplane’s wing--an airfoil--that unlocked the secret of flight? If you cut through the wing in a cross section you see, it’s like a teardrop. I’ve got a textbook I bought last year from Agnes that has all these diagrams--I’ll show it to you sometime--but the point is, the point is--it’s so simple, really. All you need for flight is the right shape, the right angle, the right speed, and then physics does the rest, the air rushes over the wing, it generates a lower pressure above, and an angular momentum, and that’s all it takes to leave the ground behind, to soar through the air--”

Aziraphale listened, and asked questions, and although he did not quite understand all the physics, understood the impulse all too well. He understood in the low rasp of Crowley’s voice the tantalizing allure of such simple mechanics. A precise calculation of speed, shape, and angle that together could generate enough lift to make thousands of pounds of metal, for a while at least, entirely weightless. To leave behind the town, the mountain, the whole state of West Virginia, and never return. 

In December, they sat next to one another, shivering, in a ruined church in the woods. Aziraphale handed over the revised roster for the next week of shifts in the mine and Crowley took it, pale delicate hands encased in moth-eaten mittens. That day, Crowley paused in explaining a particularly tricky problem set to say, awkwardly, “I sent in the application. Just have to wait now.”

Aziraphale could not stop himself from pointing at the darkening sky through the ruined roof of the church and saying, “don’t forget me, when you’re all the way up there, and I’m still stuck down here in Eden.”

“Never,” Crowley would say, and his peculiar eyes would be fervent and burning in the gloom.

***

Earlier, it had looked like the rain was going to let up, but as Aziraphale walked next to the barefoot boy, the wind picked up from the mountain and took with it a gust of cool air and then the sky opened up above them into a drenching wall of water. As thunder crashed, they both ran for the shelter of a large oak tree near a bend in the road.

Aziraphale huddled near the trunk. The other boy stood nearby, ineffectually wiping water off his face, as more fell through the branches of the tree. He blinked at Aziraphale through the sheeting rain.

Aziraphale did not know, then, that Crowley’s eyes would follow him, like twin heat seeking missiles, all that year and afterwards. Huddled next to Crowley in the rain that day beneath the wide branches of a spreading oak, he did not know that he would spend the next thirty years replaying an image in his head—one last, accusatory glance, two golden eyes meeting his own, then the slam of a metal door, the high-pitched whine of an electric motor, the clanking of cables as the eyes were winched away into the darkness below.

In the drenching rain, Aziraphale shook out the varsity letterman jacket he had been carrying carefully folded over one arm and held it out over his head and the head of the boy next to him.

“I’m so sorry, I never asked your name,” Aziraphale realized as rain pattered down above them.

“Anthony Crowley,” the other boy murmured. “But everyone just calls me Crowley.” 

“Aziraphale. You already know my last name.” 

Crowley shuffled closer under the protection of Aziraphale’s cream and gold jacket. Lightning flashed on the hillside above them.

“Gonna be a big storm,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hymn Aziraphale is singing is a gospel song from the early 20th century written by C. Austin Miles, and covered by various artists, including [ Johnny Cash](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py-_VnHv3gg). The last two verses of the song are the opening epigraph for this chapter. 
> 
> You can listen to a classic Dead Kennedys song [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrWflCJPM4w), and to another that is relevant to the content of this chapter [ here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A95yLXVgrn4). 
> 
> A CW for future chapters: When the high school portion of this story begins, Crowley and Aziraphale are both 17 (as described in this chapter). They are 18 by the time the high school portion ends, although I do not indicate in the text of the story when, exactly, they turn 18. This is a realistic AU that includes some sexual aspects of their relationship in high school, but no explicit sexual content.


	5. Out with a Bang

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The stars aligned and I was able to publish this chapter on schedule, despite my concerns last week. I had a lot of fun getting into Crowley’s POV and I’m very excited to share it with you all! 
> 
> Thanks again to [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for the beta read!
> 
> A note on content: I have updated the tags to more closely align with the story. Thanks to [The Old Aquarian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOldAquarian), for the incredibly apt tag: “this would be a tragedy were it not for the happy ending.” I don’t think this is a sad story, which is why I have not tagged it as angst, but I do think sad things happen IN the story, if that makes sense. Ultimately, if you are wondering where this is all headed, I have added a final tag: “this is a story about healing.” Healing is often a long, complicated, and frequently painful experience, but I have tried to write a story that captures the joy and catharsis of the process too. 
> 
> CW for this chapter: Caretaking of a person with terminal cancer, canon deaths occur offscreen, non-graphic piercing, implied sexual content, smoking

_Stupid_ , Crowley thought savagely at himself as he scrubbed bits of the bookshop's ceiling from his hair in Aziraphale's shower. _Stupid stupid stupid_.

The way his heart had leapt at Aziraphale’s voice on the phone, warm, familiar and instantly recognizable, even after all these years. _Stupid_. 

The thought as he drove over a week ago, fingers still dirty from repotting seedlings—he’d jumped in the truck as soon as he heard the message, hadn’t even washed his hands when he came in from the orchard—that things might have changed. The thought that Aziraphale might have wanted to talk to him again, might have wanted _him_ again. _Stupid._

Crowley had nearly convinced himself over the last several days that it was nothing he couldn’t get past. He could work with Aziraphale as a professional, he could do right by Agnes, get the shop cleaned up again the way she would have liked it, and then they could part ways. Perhaps, even, on friendly terms this time. 

And then this morning—Aziraphale just looked at him as the water cascaded down between them, those blue eyes, unfiltered by the tan haze of Crowley’s sunglasses which had been knocked off his face and lay discarded somewhere on the floor. Crowley had nearly been convinced all over again that things were going to change, that Aziraphale would step forward and enfold Crowley’s sopping wet body in his arms and say: “I’m sorry.” 

“Sorry for what?” Crowley would have mumbled into the clean, warm, bulk of Aziraphale’s shoulder. 

“I’m sorry I didn't speak to you for thirty years. I’m sorry I didn't visit you in the hospital.”

Crowley would have forgiven him, it had been on the tip of his tongue, even, that very first day on the porch, but Aziraphale hadn’t given him the opportunity. Aziraphale hadn’t apologized, he’d asked for a blank slate instead, and Crowley had agreed. What else could he have done? Their patterns were too deeply worn—a well-trodden footpath through the forest, the smooth channel of a stream carved through rock by milenna of rushing water. Aziraphale begged for something in that way of his—the beseeching tilt to his head, the self-deprecating twist of his mouth, the hopeful half glance from under lowered lashes—and Crowley gave it to him. It was as simple as that. Always had been. 

“Crowley, if it’s acceptable to you, might we just…start over?” Aziraphale had asked.

“If that’s what you want,” Crowley had said.

Afterwards, in the truck on the way home with the windows down and the warm summer air rushing past, he had convinced himself it might not even be a bad idea. As a rule, Crowley didn’t believe in looking backwards. What was done was done. He was happy, generally speaking, with how things had turned out; with the orchard, the pond, the house on the hillside—small, a bit dated perhaps, but incontrovertibly his own—with the Bentley slowly taking shape in the pole barn out back. He didn’t want the onslaught of “could have” and “might have” that talking about the past with Aziraphale would inevitably bring.

And yet—

In the warm floral-scented haze of Aziraphale’s shower, Crowley couldn’t help but imagine what it would have been like if a different sort of morning had unfolded, if Aziraphale had pulled him to his chest instead of staring at Crowley for far too long before fleeing downstairs to get him a towel.

“I forgive you,” Crowley would have said, from inside the circle of Aziraphale’s arms. 

“I still—do you—?” Aziraphale might have said, holding Crowley in his embrace. 

And Crowely would have said, “yes, God yes, for years and years—” 

And then— 

Stupid, Crowley thought, wrenching the water all the way to cold. Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

Thirty years ago, Aziraphale had been the most consistent creature on the planet. Crowley’s life might have been an ever-changing disaster—the lights that didn’t turn on one day because Luke had stuffed the bill behind his armchair instead of paying it, the damp underground where Crowley was subject to Hastur’s whims, the graveyard shifts that ran into school and then ran into swim practice then ran into more shifts in a blur of exhaustion, unpredictable from one week to the next—but Aziraphale was always the same. Always certain, always kind, always holding Crowley at arms length no matter how much Crowley squirmed and tried to get closer. It had been comforting and frustrating in equal measure. Why would it be any different now? 

Aziraphale had transformed Agnes’ small bathroom into a space more decadent than cozy. The shampoo was lavender scented and labeled in a curling French script that Crowley couldn’t read. His teeth chattered as he worked it into his hair under the cold spray. The conditioner was silky smooth and contained “shea essence,” whatever that was. There was even a pumice stone and a loofa, carefully arranged next to a fancy candle on a little bamboo tray that hooked over the tub. 

Crowley turned the water off and, curiosity getting the better of him, reached out to pick up the candle. It was just wax poured over a wick into a small mason jar, the same kind of jar Crowley bought in bulk at the end of the summer and used to can anything he couldn’t eat or freeze. It smelled faintly of sage and something else the label identified as “bergamot.” Crowley turned the candle over. A tag still affixed to the bottom of the jar said it had cost seventeen dollars. He set it hastily back on the bamboo tray. 

He pulled back the curtain to reach for one of Aziraphale’s towels—light pink, fluffy as a cloud, not the same threadbare ones Agnes had used all of last winter. Aziraphale had re-done the furnishings in the downstairs bathroom a few days ago as Crowley worked on the plumbing. He’d kitted out the sink with brass taps, a deep navy hand towel, and the kind of hand soap that came in a clear bottle with pictures of fish on the back. It was a serviceable, manly room. But up here was a different story—full of pinks and creams and fancy soaps from Paris and seventeen-dollar scented candles. The contrast would have been surprising if Crowley didn’t know Aziraphale better. This was him all over—one way on the outside, another way on the inside, more layers than a pine cone. Aziraphale liked soft things, and he liked nice things, and he liked to like them in secret. 

In the mirror Crowley was all edges, sharp cheekbones, sharp shoulders, knobby fingers. Crowley wasn’t soft, and he wasn’t nice, but once Aziraphale had liked him enough to keep him a secret, too. He’d liked Aziraphale back a great deal, and not very secretly at all. But it hadn’t been enough, had it? 

***

“What are you going to do with yourself?” Agnes had said to him, once, in this very bathroom. He had been helping her to dry off after a shower. She didn’t say, after I’m gone. She didn’t have to; Crowley heard it anyway. 

Her legs were knobby beneath the towel, all skin and bone. Crowley finished drying her feet, then helped her stand from where she was seated on the closed toilet, kept his eye half shut for her modesty as he pulled a simple cotton shift over her bare shoulders. When he had started helping her half a year ago, it had been little things—weeding the path out front, sweeping the front steps, changing the lightbulbs in the ceiling fixtures. Then, gradually, it became larger things; fixing her meals, helping her shower and dress and use the toilet. 

“I’m sorry,” he had said, the first time he washed her hair. 

“Why?” 

“For—for seeing you. Like this.” 

She’d laughed at him then, a deep throaty chuckle. “Don’t worry about me boy, it’s no shame to be naked, to need help. It’s no weakness neither. Not to need it, not to offer it.” 

Now, as Crowley crouched at her feet to help her with her slippers, one of her hands pressing lightly on his shoulder for stability like the light feet of a bird, he considered the question. 

“Dunno, same as I usually do I guess,” he said to the blue veins of her ankles. “Sell apple tree seedlings, work on the Bentley, swim in the pond, sit out on my porch every time there’s a big thunderstorm with a jug of dandelion wine and watch the rain come down.” 

“You won’t be lonely?” 

Crowley stood up. “Why would I be lonely?”

Agnes said nothing, just allowed him to help her into the kitchen. She watched as Crowley rifled through her recipe box—a rolodex of handwritten cards like the one downstairs—and plucked one out. 

“Kale and bean casserole alright for this week?” 

“Crowley,” Agnes said, instead of answering. “Crowley, I’ve got to tell you something.”

“I gotta get to the store before it closes—” 

She held up a hand. “Humor me, please. Grant an old mountain witch her deathbed confession.” 

Crowley swallowed, smoothed down the worn edges of the recipe card with the tips of his fingers. “Don’t look like a deathbed to me. Looks like a kitchen table youse sittin’ at.” 

“Crowley, you’ve still got a lot of life to live. I’ve set something into motion, but all I’ve done is give it a push. What’s meant to be will be, if you let it. Just don’t run away if it gets hard, don’t run away no matter what you might learn, don’t run away without giving it a chance.” 

Agnes always spoke in riddles, but in her last days, she had become nearly incomprehensibly enigmatic. Crowley didn’t know if it was a symptom, never knew what to say when she got this way. But it was rare that she included him in her odd predictions. This felt personal in an eerie sort of way that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, that made him think of cool scales and dusty hands deep beneath the earth. 

“Run away from what?” he asked. 

She smiled at him, and didn’t answer. It was the doting gentle smile of a grandmother, but he knew better than to trust it. Underneath she was all lines and edges, as sharp as he was.

Weeks later, after the inquest, Crowley had shaken open the morning paper to see a small notice on the last page about the transfer of a historic property. He hadn’t given it much thought, beyond to feel touched that Agnes remembered, to smile sadly thinking of how she had cared. Agnes had moved in mysterious, circuitous ways, but nearly fifty years of living in Eden had taught Crowley that the world was nearly always a mundane, straight line. Aziraphale, Crowely thought, would not be coming back for the bookshop. He would hire contractors, fix it up, and sell it all without ever entering the state of West Virginia. 

As it turned out, Crowley had been very, very wrong. He still couldn’t decide if he was glad or not. 

***

The news had come on a clear morning in March. The day was cold, the air was still. Ironically enough, he had been driving into town to see Agnes. 

The radio in the truck, which was impossible to turn off no matter what he did (a quirk of the vehicle that he hadn’t yet been able to fix after nearly twenty years of tinkering) was tuned into the closest NPR station, which really wasn’t very close at all. Static resolved itself into words as he drove up and over the hills, slid back into static as he descended into the steep valley between mountains. 

The hiss of the radio and then: “—around seven in the morning. Early reports suggest that the explosion was deliberately triggered by a single individual, identified by law enforcement as Agnes Nutter, aged 89, who owned a bookshop in the small town of Eden—” the voice faded into static. Crowley slammed on the breaks and reversed the truck back uphill on the empty road until—

“— caused extensive damage to heavy equipment assembled at the top of Pine Creek Mountain in preparation for removing the top layers of earth and rock in a process known as Mountaintop Removal Mining. From a note found by law enforcement at the scene, it appears that Ms. Nutter, who was being treated for stage four breast cancer, did not intend to survive the blast. Ms. Nutter is the only known casualty of the disaster, making her the seventh death at an Eden County mine since a 1985 explosion and subsequent shaft collapse killed sixteen miners and severely injured two—”

Crowley turned the truck off. The radio cut out, the idle of the engine died on the breeze. He rolled down the window with the hand crank, fumbled in the glove compartment for a crumpled packet that still held two cigarettes. He had been trying to quit again, and for a moment all he could think was how absurdly grateful he was that he hadn’t yet gotten around to throwing the last pack out. He cupped a cigarette in his hand, blew white smoke out into the pure blue morning. A bird sang nearby, the throaty call of a red-winged blackbird. Crowley listened to it with a detached sort of numbness that was only partially due to the cold air blowing into the cab of the truck, cutting through the sheer cotton of his t-shirt. The bird that was singing flitted past the windshield in a flurry of black and red. Unbidden, the lyrics of an old song, sung in his mother’s voice over the plaintive twang of a hand picked dulcimer rose in his mind: _He's got a blood red spot on his wing, And all the rest of him's black as coal._

Crowley had known Agnes was up to something, but Agnes was always up to something, always planning, always one sprightly step ahead with a twinkle in her eye. He had known, also, that she didn’t have long left. They both knew it. Crowley had waited for her in his truck in the parking lot of the hospital in Morgantown for nearly two hours at her last check up. When the visit was over, he’d gone inside to help her back out to the truck and he’d seen the print out of a scan before she slid it back into the manila envelope the doctor had given her. It was more white than grey, more tumor than muscle and bone. She leaned on his arm with birdlike lightness as they left the hospital together. The bleach smell of the floor made the back of Crowley’s neck itch, the pastel pink walls felt tight around him, like the walls of a tunnel a thousand feet underground.

“I’m sorry.” Agnes said as they passed through the hissing automatic doors into the cold February air. “I know taking me here has been hard for you. We won’t need to come here again.”

“Ok,” Crowley said, because there was nothing else to say. Agnes knew herself better than anyone else. He knew better than to try and convince her otherwise. “Ok, if you’re sure.”

Crowley’s voice was steady, but his hands shook as he moved to buckle her seat belt for her. She noticed, of course she did. She covered his hands with her own before he could pull away to get into the driver’s seat. Her hands were wrinkled and warm on top of his, filled with a strange weight for all that the chemo had left her light as air.

Parked on the side of a mountain on the morning of Agnes’ death, Crowley lit the second cigarette with trembling fingers and exhaled into the cold mountain air. He knew now that the heaviness in Agnes’ hands had been the weight of certainty. She had known, even then, even before they had left the hospital parking lot, what she was going to do.

“Don’t be sad,” Agnes had said as he tried and tried to buckle her seat belt and kept missing, somehow unable to make the two pieces click together. “It’s my time to experience the next great adventure. I’ve lived a wonderful life, I regret very little about it. And besides—” She reached up, cupped his cheek, ran one thumb beneath his glasses to wipe away the tear that, to Crowley’s horror and shame, threatened to spill out from underneath them. She smiled at him, and it was not the kindly smile of an old lady on her deathbed. It was youthful, sharp, and full of mirth. “Besides, I plan to go out with a bang.”

Agnes was fond of a good metaphor, but at times she could be distressingly, memorably literal. _I ought to have known_ , Crowley thought, as he started the truck, head spinning from the rush of nicotine after ten days without it. _I really ought to have known._

But if he had known, what would he have done? Told her not to do it? No, Agnes trusted him because he never tried to talk her out of things she really believed in. Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine Agnes dying in a hospital bed, couldn’t imagine her like his mother at the end—docile in her suffering, unable to move or speak or even eat. Agnes always liked to do things on her own terms. What would he have done? Would he have helped her? Maybe, but he knew that she wouldn’t have let him. She was careful like that. He was sure she had arranged it so that the only one to take the blame for this would be her, so that the only human life harmed by the destruction of nearly a million dollars of machinery would be her own.

 _If I had known, I would have suggested she target a different company_ , said a small voice in the back of Crowley’s head, a voice he tried to ignore. _I would have suggested she blow up Wright Mines instead._

Crowley rolled up the window, turned the truck back on, let the heat diffuse through the cab. He supposed there was no reason to go into town now. He might as well eat the groceries he had put in the back of his truck himself. He drove into town anyway, because he had never been able to resist the ache of prodding a fresh wound.

The bookshop was already cordoned off with yellow tape. Two black Suburbans with federal plates were parked out front on the gravel and a man in a suit stood on the porch talking into his cell phone. Crowley didn’t stop at the bookshop, didn’t even slow down. He might be sentimental, but he was no fool. He was sure Agnes hadn’t left a paper trail that would get him in trouble, or give the law enforcement agents swarming the bookshop cause to show up at his door.

They came anyway, two days later, as Crowley was washing dishes. He saw the black car bump up his potholed gravel drive through the window, and sighed. He washed his makeup off in the kitchen sink, took off the necklace he was wearing, slid on a pair of sunglasses and walked out onto the porch.

Two well dressed men got out of the car, flashed their badges at him.

“Did you know Agnes Nutter?” the first one, a big bulky blonde, asked.

“Knew of her,” Crowley said, lighting a cigarette. He was up to half-a-pack a day again—a terrible habit really—but then again, he’d never had much self control. He’d also never had the FBI on his front porch before, so he thought he could be forgiven for indulging. “Didn’t know her.”

That, at least, had the advantage of being true. No one really knew Agnes, but Agnes.

“Seems like you did some work on her shop a few years back,” the agent pressed on.

“Yeah.”

“She never talked to you about any plans, you never suggested anything to her?”

Crowley frowned. “No, why would I?”

The second agent spoke up in a soft, compassionate tone. “We heard that you were involved in a pretty horrific mine accident yourself a few years ago, we would completely understand if you felt some lingering resentment. And we know Agnes was a good listener, I’m sure it would have felt good to let her in on how you were feeling—”

Anger flared up in Crowley, sudden and quick like a bonfire catching. He looked from one FBI agent to the other. “That’s what this is about? That’s why you’re here? Listen, if getting fucked over by the mines is a motive, half of Eden county has one. Throw a stone down Main Street, first person you hit probably has a story worse than mine.”

“We understand,” the second agent said soothingly. “We’re just doing our job, investigating all leads. You wouldn’t happen to know a man by the last name of Hastur, would you?”

Crowley hoped the clench of his jaw didn’t show. “We worked the same crew for a while, yeah. But that was years ago, believe me, we don’t keep up. Agnes never talked to him neither.”

“You don’t like him then?”

“I don’t.” Crowely stabbed the cigarette out on his porch railing. “I don’t, but you ought not to bother him about this. It’s not his style. If he wanted to cause trouble, he’d burn the place down, not explode it.”

“Alright, alright,” the second man spread his hands placatingly. “Just a few more questions, Mr. Crowley, and we will be on our way.”

But Crowley was done with questions. “Are you asking in any kind of formal capacity?” he asked. “Are you charging me with anything?”

The blonde shifted on his feet. “No, of course not,” the other agent said. “Just a few questions.”

“I’ll save you time,” Crowley said. “Here’s the answer. I’ve got a shotgun behind the wood stove and a handgun in the basement and this is private property.”

The agents left after that. Crowley gathered up _The New York Times_ which was spread out on the kitchen table, open to an article by some city reporter—Anathema Device, what kind of a name was that?—which summarized the facts of the case and then rhapsodized for three increasingly insulting paragraphs about the poetic and humble poverty of “dying coal country.” Under _The Times_ was an article clipped from the high school paper. He had stopped at the diner the other day and Pepper had been giving them out to everyone with a defiant grin on her face. The full page obituary was a much kinder treatment than _The New York Times_ had given Agnes. Privately Crowley thought that Pepper would be lucky to still be editor next week, but he admired her attitude. She reminded him of himself at that age. He carefully stored both the paper and the clipping in the top drawer of his dresser.

It was a Sunday. Crowley put on a black dress from the back of his closet and walked up the hill behind the house, past the apple orchard and the greenhouse and the goat pen. He sat on the earth below a large spreading oak tree and looked out over the valley; the glitter of his pond below, the tar paper roof of his house, the unnaturally flat top of Eden Mountain in the distance. There hadn’t been enough of Agnes left to have a proper funeral, and anyway, who would have gone to it besides Crowley? It didn’t matter. All of the graves in these hills moved as the ground settled around them. You could be buried in a cemetery, but in a year, you’d belong to the mountain. And that was how Agnes would have wanted it. Agnes never had children, but she’d loved this land like family. She was old enough to remember what Eden was like when Wright Mining Corporation was still just one shaft, excavated by a dozen people and twice as many mules, before the other companies had moved in too, before the top of the mountain had been carted away truckload by truckload. Crowley closed his eyes, smelled the thawing earth and felt, like a physical pressure on his skin, Agnes’s love rising up from the ground. Crowley worked his fingers in the cold dirt, thought of Agnes, thought of his own mother, buried also in this green earth, and when he walked down the hill dry-eyed an hour later, he was sure that was the end of it. 

Then, of course, Aziraphale had called.

***

It had been a teenage infatuation, blown out of proportion by what happened afterwards, by the lonely years later. It didn’t mean anything. Crowley didn’t even want to pick up where they had left off. It wasn’t possible. They were too different. But still a part of him yearned towards Aziraphale the way a seedling, grown all winter under fluorescent lights, yearned towards the first sight of the sun.

After their first meeting on the porch Crowley had driven home, and swam circles around the pond until the sun had nearly gone down and he was too tired to think straight. Yes, alright, he was still attracted to Aziraphale. Crowley admitted it to himself the next morning as he pulled the truck into the familiar patch of gravel in front of the shop. But that was fine. People were attracted to other people all the time! It was just part of being human. There was no reason it had to be anything more than a rekindled crush. He could recognize the attraction for what it was, ignore it, and move on. 

Only—

Only—

Only it might have been easier if Aziraphale was harder to like. If, in the intervening years between high school and now, he had become more like his father or his brother—stiff, foreboding, full of false cheer. But Aziraphale, it seemed, had only become more like himself. 

In the days that followed their meeting on the porch, Aziraphale hung around wherever Crowley was working, happy to talk with him for hours about the sorts of things that in high school he would have tried to keep hidden. Nothing sordid, just different. An encyclopedic knowledge of silent film, an unironic love of Andrew Lloyd Webber showtunes, which he hummed under his breath off key as he bumbled about the shop, a fascination with antique postcards and old photography that Crowley discovered when an opened closet door in the back of the bookshop and dislodged an avalanche of them onto the floor. "Oh look," Aziraphale cried, delighted, tracing the line of a bather's old fashioned swimming costume with one neatly manicured nail. "What a lovely seaside adventure. That must be Cape Cod, but it looked so different, back then, don't you think?"

Crowley, who could count on one hand the number of states he had visited—Massachusetts not among them—nodded along as Aziraphale chatted happily, face alight, poring over images of past vacations frozen in time, and then went outside to sit in his truck, smoke through three cigarettes, and pinch his thigh until he got a hold of himself.

The trouble with a blank slate, Crowley reflected, was that it wasn’t really a fresh start if you had always been madly infatuated with the slate itself. Wipe clean the past thirty years, and it was still the same person underneath. Crowley had forgotten, after all these years of building up whatever he and Aziraphale once had in his head, how much he genuinely liked Aziraphale. 

Which made it rankle all the more to see Aziraphale skipping lunch to pore over the details of other people's pasts, postcards between lovers and friends and family describing vacations long ago. _What about yours?_ Crowley wanted to ask him. _Where was your postcard? Why didn't you ever look me up and call? Why didn't you visit in the hospital?_

But Aziraphale had made his terms abundantly clear. Crowley wasn’t going to dredge up the past and destroy the easy rapport they had fallen back into. He and Aziraphale were friends again, after a fashion. Crowley wouldn’t throw that away for anything now, no matter how fetching Aziraphale looked when Crowley rejoined him in the bookshop that afternoon—bow tie askew, eyes alight, a smudge of dust high on his cheekbone just begging to be brushed away by a gentle, caressing thumb. 

It would have been easier, Crowley thought, if he understood it. Aziraphale was ridiculous and fussy and wore an out-of-date, frumpy sort of prohibition-era housecoat whenever he didn’t have to leave the shop. He said things like, _would you be a dear_ when he needed Crowley to fetch him something, and _looks like you’ve been busier than a moth in a mitten_ when he was impressed with the work Crowley had done that day and, inexplicably, _that just dills my pickle_ whenever he found a book he liked the look of. Even here, in Eden, Crowley didn’t know anyone under the age of eighty who talked like that. It should have been ridiculous, it should have been irritating. Instead, it was intensely…charming? 

Aziraphale was not a climbing guide from New York, a ski instructor from the midwest, an AmeriCorps volunteer from Princeton. He was not like the others Crowley had sought out for a season or two; tall, lanky men who regarded him with the detached curiosity of a visitor looking through the glass at an exotic animal in a zoo. Aziraphale was not a stranger, no matter how much he wanted to pretend otherwise. He wasn’t a tourist. He had, after all, once been on the same side of the glass as Crowley. 

Aziraphale wasn’t a tourist, but he was soft in a way none of the others had been. Soft stomach, soft eyes, soft hands. Crowley never went in for soft these days, but watching Aziraphale be soft, watching him let himself have nice things eased something deep inside Crowley that he didn’t want to think about too closely. Aziraphale had always been large, broad shouldered, an excellent defensive end. But in high school he had seemed smaller than he naturally was, curled in on himself, perpetually wearing a hunted look that only Crowley seemed to be able to see. Aziraphale stood tall these days, moved about the shop with grace, allowed himself to be soft, to be kind. The hunted look was mostly gone. _He deserves it_ , Crowley thought fiercely. _He deserves it, after all these years, to be happy. I’m glad at least one of us made it out of this place alive._

Azirphale deserved to be happy, and for the most part, Crowley thought he was. 

Only—

Only—

Only, occasionally Crowley caught Aziraphale looking at him from across the room and the look on his face couldn’t be described as anything other than misery. It was there and then gone as soon as Aziraphale registered Crowely looking back, subsumed into a smile that cracked at the edges. 

***

On Monday morning, a week after meeting on the porch, Crowley wrapped a towel around his waist and stepped from the bathroom into the bedroom. It was empty; a fresh white undershirt and a pair of Aziraphale’s jeans were folded neatly on the bed. Crowley’s glasses, evidently retrieved from the third floor and dried off, sat on top of the pile. Crowley swallowed down a momentary, juvenile pang of disappointment that Aziraphale was not here, waiting for him to emerge from the bathroom clad only in a fluffy pink towel. 

There were no boxers in the pile, so Crowley slid the jeans on over his bare skin. They were comically short in the legs, far too large around his middle, fairly hanging off his hips. He brought the undershirt up to his nose before pulling it over his head. It smelled of laundry detergent and, underneath that, something rich and masculine that might have been Aziraphale’s aftershave, might have just been the smell of his skin. 

_No_ , Crowley told himself sternly. _You are not going to do this to yourself. Not again. Not with the same man. He made it clear how he felt ages ago. Only—_

Only—

Only, Aziraphale would smell like this, wouldn’t he, if Crowley were to bury his face in Aziraphale’s neck, push his nose into the tight curls behind Aziraphale’s ear. Crowley lifted the collar of the shirt, ducked his head to inhale the scent of it again. It was fading now, lost in the heat of Crowley’s own skin. 

_You are not this stupid_ , Crowley thought. _Surely you are not this stupid. You’re completely over him. You did just fine without him for thirty years, you can do just fine without him for another thirty years or more._

A tentative knock sounded at the bedroom door. Crowley jumped and crammed his sunglasses onto his face so hard that the nose piece poked painfully into his remaining eye. 

“I made tea, if you like—to warm you up after the rain,” Aziraphale said from the other side of the door. And it was hopeless, Crowley was not over him, not by a long shot, not even after thirty years. Sixty years could have gone by and it still would have been like they hadn’t passed at all. 

“Well, not tea, exactly. I boiled water. I didn’t know what kind you liked. I have all of Agnes’ teas out on the sideboard, and also one of my own I brought with me from DC. It’s sort of a smokey flavor, I thought you might enjoy it? Or...” uncertainty crept into Aziraphale’s voice as Crowley stood there and didn’t answer, gawking open-mouthed at the door like a fish out of water, or rather, like a fish out of water simultaneously experiencing a sudden and horrifying inability to suppress its emotions on an otherwise ordinary Monday in June. “I don’t even know if you like tea. Would you rather coffee instead?” 

“Tea’s fine,” Crowley managed, and shuffled towards the door, rubbing at the eye that still watered from its abrupt encounter with his sunglasses, muttering about Agnes’ machinations, and cursing his own foolishness under his breath. 

***

The smokey tea was good. Crowley blew over the mug to cool it. Aziraphale watched him with bright blue eyes. Crowley watched Aziraphale watching him and thought, _my God this is torture. This entire summer is going to be torture._

Something about Aziraphale’s presence across the table—the same kitchen table where he had chopped fruits for Agnes’ jam last summer, where, years ago, she had taught him how to play the dulcimer—made everything in the kitchen feel more real, more solid, brighter than the world had been since Agnes’ death. Aziraphale’s eyes crinkled as he smiled at Crowley. The muscles in Azirpahale’s throat moved as he swallowed down a sip of his own tea. _It’s going to be torture and I’m not even going to mind,_ Crowley despaired. _I’m going to sit here and enjoy being tortured and when it’s over, when he leaves again for good, the only thing I’m going to want is for him to come back and torture me some more._

“Thanks,” Crowley said, “um...for the clothes I mean.” 

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry I didn’t have something that would fit you better,” Aziraphale sighed. “I’m afraid I’m a great deal heavier than you, my dear.” There was something in Aziraphale’s tone, Crowley thought, a flinch that was well hidden, but still there if you were listening carefully. 

“I don’t mind,” Crowley said immediately, then wondered if now would be an appropriate time to leave the table, drive home, and drown himself in the pond. It didn’t seem tactful to ask, so he took a gulp of the scalding tea instead and nearly coughed it out all over the gingham tablecloth. 

Improbably, Aziraphale blushed. “Glad to hear it,” he murmured and shit, this was orders of magnitude worse than Crowley had expected. Aziraphale couldn’t _play along_. It just wasn’t _fair_.

Crowley cast about the room for something else to focus on, something that wouldn’t be Aziraphale’s soft-looking hips under the fabric of his waistcoat—Crowley had convinced him by now that there was no need for WalMart polo shirts in his presence—the soft skin between his thumb and forefinger where his hand rested on the table, the eminently kissable bones of his wrists. 

“What’s this then,” Crowley said, abrupt, pointing across the table to a pile of feathers and string that surrounded a small vise on a stand. 

“Oh, I tie flies,” Aziraphale said, face lighting with pleasure at being asked about one of his hobbies. God, it was absolutely _unbearable_ how much Crowley liked him. 

“Yeah?” Crowley asked, trying his best to push down the warm, tender feeling that rose in his chest like a sun. “Like for fishing?”

“Yes indeed. I sell them to a fishing store in DC. I do it for fun though. I just like the intricacy of it. I like to have something to do with my hands.” 

_I have something you could do with your hands_ , Crowley thought. He stood and walked around the table to inspect Aziraphale’s work closer. A tiny fish hook was suspended from the jaws of the vise, a bead threaded through its shank, which was half covered in feathers and other natural materials. A bobbin loaded with copper wire hung from the hook. 

“Here, this is what they look like finished,” Aziraphale reached across Crowley and pressed something small and sharp into the palm of his hand. Crowley held it up to the light. It was very neatly done—he couldn’t see any knots on it at all—wire and metal and feathers all twisted up to look like the sort of insect that would float up and drift downstream if you turned over enough rocks in the riverbed. “It’s a very simple recipe, one of the first that I learned to tie. What do you think?” Aziraphale asked, looking up at Crowley all earnest blue eyes. 

Crowley smirked down at him. “I think it really dills my pickle.” 

“Oh, stop, now you’re just making fun,” Aziraphale gasped, swatting at him, but he was laughing. “If you want it, you can keep it.” 

Crowley hefted the fly in his palm. It weighed nothing at all. “I think I will.” 

Aziraphale leaned back in his chair, smiling easily, and oh, Crowley _liked_ him so much it hurt. 

“Do you fish with these flies?” Crowley asked. 

Crowley knew a little about fly fishing. He had dated a guy once who worked as a guide out of New River Gorge, if by dated you meant drove four hours round trip a few times one summer to exchange mediocre blow jobs by the side of a river. 

“I like the art of fly tying, but I’ve never been much of a fisherman,” Aziraphlae sighed. “I’m trying to teach myself now actually, but it’s going slowly. I’m not very good I’m afraid, and it’s terribly embarrassing to practice casting in the field out back. The last time I tried it, several families came out on their back porches to watch me tangle the line in the grass.” 

“Come to my pond,” Crowley blurted out before he could stop himself. “No one to watch you there. Well, there’s me I guess, but I could, um...turn around if you wanted? Plus you might actually catch some fish, I’ve got bluegill and bass and some stocked carp but if you catch those you’ll have to throw them back because they keep the cattails down—” 

“Oh, I don’t intend to kill _any_ fish,” Aziraphale looked vaguely alarmed at the suggestion. “But that’s very kind of you Crowley. I’d love to come to fish in your pond sometime.” 

“Alright then,” Crowley’s voice cracked a little. “I’ll write my address down. Come over whenever you like. I mean it.” 

“I will,” Aziraphale said, taking the piece of paper Crowley offered him and folding it to put in his waistcoat pocket with an odd sort of reverence. “I will.”

***

Crowley pushed the hook of the fly into the upholstery of the passenger seat so as not to lose it on the way home. The rain had stopped sometime in the afternoon and the air rushing past the open window of his truck was full of the sweet smell of wet earth and things growing, striving up towards the setting sun. 

He had stayed at Aziraphale’s shop the whole day and gotten no repairs done at all, just talked of nothing, teased him, at some point helped him make a quiche which had gotten overdone in the oven because Aziraphale had insisted on showing him the full _Les Miserables_ 10th Anniversary Concert while they waited for it to bake and they had both been so wrapped up in the music they had forgotten about lunch entirely. They had eaten it anyway, with all the windows open to air the smoke out of the apartment, and Crowley had said it was very good even though it wasn’t at all and Aziraphale had called him a liar, but good naturedly, and they had laughed all through lunch and then made tea again, discussed the merits of Philip Quast vs Norm Lewis, argued about if Javert deserved to be forgiven (“He’s too rigid and he does the wrong thing. He makes Valjean’s life miserable” Aziraphale insisted. “Nah,” Crowley said, “for my money, he was just doing his job, and besides, he repented at the end”). Aziarphale had made them each a third cup of the strong smokey tea he had brought from DC, and then all of a sudden, without quite knowing how it had happened, Crowley had realized it was already after six o'clock and that he ought to go home to feed the animals. 

All in all, it had been the nicest day Crowley had experienced in ages. The aftertaste of it burned satisfyingly in his chest like a good whisky. He hummed to himself as he drove, something from the musical, disconnected images and sounds from the afternoon popping into his head unbidden—the rounded half moons of Aziraphale’s nails, the dimples in his cheeks when he smiled, his atrocious attempt at a French accent. The smokey taste of Aziraphale’s tea still hung around the roof of Crowley’s mouth. He reached for a cigarette from the glove compartment, stopped himself, wanting the taste to linger more than he wanted the rush of nicotine. 

At home, Crowley stripped naked in the bedroom, pulled on a ratty pair of his own jeans, no shirt. He only hesitated a second before giving in to the deeply embarrassing urge to stash Aziraphale’s shirt and pants in the top drawer of his dresser rather than throwing them in the laundry to wash and then return. 

_I’ll still have something of his_ , Crowley thought, with a sudden gust of melancholy, like a screen door slamming shut in the wind. _I’ll still have something to remember him by, when this all goes to shit._

The melancholy followed Crowley all the way out to the barn where he fed the goats and chickens. It liberally seasoned his dinner. He tasted it with each drag of his after dinner cigarette.

The fly Aziraphale had given him was still attached to the upholstery of Crowley’s truck. He went outside to get it, then got his tool kit from the basement, found an old earring that had long ago lost its partner in the back of the shelf above the toilet. The earring was gaudy, a long faux crystal dangling down, the remnant of a dry spell so desperate that Crowley had ended up going clubbing in Cleveland before the drive and the loud music and the risk of it—it had been the early 90s after all, the days when every willing stranger was a roulette wheel—got to be too much for him. He used a pair of pliers to separate the crystal from the earring and then rooted around in his toolkit until he found a wire the right size to pass through the eye of Aziraphale’s hook and loop it around the base of the earring. 

He took this creation to the bathroom along with a cork, a safety pin and a lighter. He turned his head to one side then the other, consideringly in the mirror, then decided on the right side for tradition’s sake, although years ago both lobes had been pierced. He sterilized the pin in the flame and brought it to his ear with a twist of anticipation indistinguishable from fear, indistinguishable from pleasure. The safety pin stung, but hardly bled at all. He wrestled the earring in quickly afterwards, before regarding himself in the mirror. The work of Aziraphale’s hands dangled from his ear, glinting softly in the dim light of the bathroom. 

Aziraphale had soft hands. At least, they looked soft—Crowley hadn’t had occasion to touch them in thirty years. He ran his own calloused hand gently over his chest, thought of what it might have been like if he had walked out of the bathroom to find Aziraphale waiting for him in the bedroom. He imagined letting the towel fall from his waist, dropping to his knees on the wood floor, crawling across the room to press his mouth against Aziraphale’s still clothed thigh. Aziraphale was soft, but underneath the softness, there was a kind of desperate thrumming energy. Would he be gentle, Crowley wondered. Or would he bury his hands in Crowley’s long hair, hold him in place to do what he wanted? Would he run one caressing finger down Crowley’s right earlobe, which was throbbing now with the same steady beat that throbbed between Crowley’s thighs, would he pinch at the fresh wound the way Crowley did now with the hand not on his chest? Would Aziraphale say, wondering and low, _my dear, did you do this just for me?_

Crowley shivered at the idea, put both hands on the edges of the sink to resist temptation but—what would it hurt really? The melancholy air was back, swirling through Crowley’s small wood-paneled house, rising from the worn linoleum of the bathroom to curl around his ankles. Aziraphale didn’t have to know, did he? Crowley could handle matters, so to speak, let this infatuation burn off into the night, wake up clear headed in the morning. 

Crowley’s hands let go of the sink, moved to the button of his jeans, carefully worked the zipper down over bare skin. 

He thought of blue eyes and cheeks dimpled from smiling, the furtive, inexpert press of lips, long ago in a ruined church high on the hillside. His hand moved in a steady rhythm. He couldn’t bear to look at himself, so he looked at the earring in the mirror instead. He imagined Aziraphale’s clever fingers working the thread, running copper wire in precise, deceptive circles, converting the cruel hook into a defenseless insect, creating a predator that looked for all the world like prey. 

This was not infatuation. It hadn’t been thirty years ago, and it certainly wasn’t now. It would not be gone by morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who has been commenting and reading. I know I am slow to reply to comments, but I treasure every one! 
> 
> If you’re curious about the song that Crowley thinks of when he’s parked on the road listening to the radio and sees the blackbird fly past, [ here it is.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fV74CkZNKA)
> 
> At the risk of contaminating my fanfic with too many personal details, I’ll let you know that I learned this song from _my own_ mother. I thought it was a pretty common folk tune, but you wouldn’t believe how difficult it was to track down--as far as I’m aware, the linked version is the only version on youtube, although there are other songs by the same name. There’s also a cover of it on spotify by Kathy Mattea. I always think it’s exciting to discover that something you thought was universal is actually quite hyperlocal! 
> 
> I am going to try to stick to a weekly schedule of updating on Sunday afternoons (EST), but I am sure there will be a few weeks here and there where this will not be possible. I learned from last week not to speak too soon about delays (honestly still pretty proud of myself for making a chapter that was supposed to be 4k, and then ballooned into 8k, come together in less than a week--and incredibly grateful to my beta Anti_Kate for rolling with it). Please check my tumblr for the most up to date info on posting schedule--there will be a pinned post at the top of my page if I have to deviate from weekly updates. Also if you have any thoughts about the story or just want to chat, my tumblr DMs are always open! 
> 
> <3 Princip


	6. Fall, 1984: Crowley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is now beautiful art for this fic! [Call of the Ocean ](https://call-of-the-ocean.tumblr.com/) made some absolutely gorgeous sketches of Crowley. If you haven’t seen them yet, run, don’t walk [to check it out](https://call-of-the-ocean.tumblr.com/post/629074215494090752/a-little-page-of-sketches-i-did-for-princip1914), and then come back to read this chapter! 
> 
> Thanks once again to my beta [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for her excellent suggestions and encouragement when all I felt like doing was tossing this chapter out the window. 
> 
> My high school physics teacher who, it turned out, did not really like teaching physics, played the movie October Sky for our class _at least_ ten times over the course of 9th grade. Little did he know he was preparing me to write this chapter. 
> 
> There’s some heavy themes in this chapter, but I have tried my best to handle them sensitively. 
> 
> CW: alcoholism, cancer, death of a parent, implied non-graphic physical abuse of children, teenage cigarette smoking, non-graphic vomiting

The summer Crowley met Aziraphale was the summer he spent doodling airfoils on everything he could find. On scraps of paper, on the unpaid bills piling up in the entryway of the mobile home, on Luke’s paperwork from the mine, on his bare leg with a pen as he sat idly on his bed in just his boxers, dreaming of flight. 

_An airplane is subject to four forces: lift, weight, drag, and thrust_ , Crowley read in the aeronautical engineering textbook Agnes had given him. Flight was a matter of practical physics, not magic, but on sleepless humid nights Crowley would lie in bed staring up at the stained ceiling of the trailer, listening to the faint hum of the ancient TV through the aluminum wall separating his bedroom from the living room, and murmur the words like an incantation. 

The Wright brothers (no relation to the Wrights of Wright Mines) had put into practice these principles of aerodynamics more than half a century ago. Crowley first learned about the physics of flight when he was twelve, in an advertisement for a model airplane in a Sears and Roebuck catalogue that was being used as kindling for the fire pit. 

He ordered his first model airplane when he was thirteen. It took him nearly a year to save up the money and only two days to utterly wreck it off a cliff above the river. It was a lesson in physics applied to the real world. Even if the shape of the wing was right, if the wind was wrong, you could stall out and fall. The wind was a thing of chance, but real airplanes could correct for that, with flaps and rudders and gimbals. Crowley knew because he had read about these technologies in the stack of back issues of _Aeronautics Magazine_ that Agnes kept for him at the bookshop. 

Crowley was more careful with his second model airplane. He only flew it when the hand-made wind sock he had affixed to the steeple of a ruined church high on the hill blew in the right direction. That plane lasted longer—a month—before Luke found it lying around the house and crushed it in a fit of drunken viciousness beneath the weight of his rocker armchair. This, too, was a lesson, although not in physics. The lesson was: sometimes life is like that. The lesson was: don’t leave the things you care about out on the kitchen counter for anyone to pick up and smash. 

Crowley took these lessons to heart. Years later, in the dim upper reaches of the bookshop, when he told Aziraphale his plans to apply to the Air Force Academy he braced for a similar scene; splintered balsa wood in a trail of wreckage from the living room to the fridge that was never empty of beer. 

Instead, Aziraphale said, “you’re going to be an excellent pilot.” Instead, Aziraphale asked him about flight and Crowley stammered out something about angle and speed and lift and Aziraphale nodded along like he….like he was genuinely interested. Like he cared. 

It was still early in their acquaintance—Crowley had barely known Aziraphale then. They hadn’t yet worked out The Arrangement (it would come weeks later, in the same ruined church on the hill where Crowley used to fly his airplanes). Crowley hadn’t yet understood what it was he wanted from Aziraphale (his influence at the mine, but something beyond that too, something that looked in a certain light like friendship, in another light like the soft curl of Aziraphale’s lips when he smiled). Aziraphale hadn’t yet decided how much he was willing to give (only a little, very cautiously, and then more and then more, and then, suddenly, nothing at all). 

It was still early in their acquaintance but from then on, Aziraphale was indelibly linked with the concept—with the sensation—of flight. Crowley thought of him later when he was trudging down the long access shaft, when he stood behind the shearer as it advanced along the wall, when he hauled rock bolts to hold the roof in place, when he sprayed water to keep the dust down. Crowley thought of Aziraphale and his stomach tightened and dropped as though he were a thousand feet up in the air and not a thousand feet in the earth, buried under a God-forsaken mountain in a God-forsaken town. 

***

The first descent. It divided Crowley’s life neatly into a _before_ and an _after_. Perhaps it was odd for him to have assigned such significance to it in the years that followed. There had been nothing special about that particular blustery October day. Crowley’s life was full of other _befores_ and _afters_ that were objectively more important. Before Aziraphale. After The Fall. But the first descent was both a function of Aziraphale—a gentle nudge in the roster, the forging of a personnel card, the fruit of an unusual arrangement—and that which set in motion the final descent, The Fall. _This_ before and _this_ after were the ones that mattered. They were the secret index to which all the other moments of rupture in Crowley’s life were referenced. 

The cage elevator rattled as it dropped. The sky above became a square the size of a tablecloth, then a postage stamp, then it was gone. The only light came from the orange glow of the bulb at the top of the elevator. One by one headlamps switched on. Crowley shifted, shivered in the cold, humid air of the heart of the mountain, pulled the baggy high-vis jacket closer around his body. Around him, the other men, for whom this was an entirely ordinary afternoon, talked and joked. Ligur and Hastur grumbled about pay cuts. Eric, who had been Crowley’s classmate not even a year ago and was now in the final stages of his certification, laughed at something one of the others had said. Crowley looked up at the flickering bulb at the top of the cage, at the dark rock overhead and thought: _an airplane is subject to four forces: lift, weight, drag, and thrust. The shape of an airplane wing—the airfoil—is designed to generate sufficient lift to overcome the weight of the plane. This occurs when air passes along the curved surface of the airfoil, producing a lower pressure above the surface of the wing than below it in a process known as the coanda effect..._

***

Crowley was humming softly as he worked on the last problem in the set, didn’t notice until he looked up from the page that Aziraphale’s eyes were fixed on him.

“What?” 

“What tune is that?” Aziraphale asked.

“Dunno,” Crowley shrugged, shivered in the cold November air. “Something my mom used to sing, I think. Anyway, I’ve nearly got this one figured out if you want to go over the vector diagram—” 

“You never talk about her,” Aziraphale’s eyes were soft. “Your mom.” 

Crowley shifted on the hard wooden pew, rustled the papers in his grasp. “What’s there to say?” 

_That she was kind. That she loved me. That her hands were soft and her hair was soft when I brushed it, because she couldn’t lift her arms to do it herself after the mastectomy. That she always smelled like a field in summer—floral and clean—except for when she came home from the clinic and then she smelled like the harsh chemicals Bee used to scrub the floor at the Burger King and it filled the whole house, hung there even with the windows open—_

“Not much to it. She got sick and died and left me and Bee alone.” 

(With Luke, Crowley did not add. If Aziraphale noticed, he did not say.) 

“Bee seems nice,” Aziraphale said, careful. Ah, there it was. He had noticed, after all, the way Crowley tiptoed around his father’s name. 

“Bee is—tough,” Crowley said. “But she has to be, looking out for me. For both of us.” 

(Bee at thirteen years old standing in the doorway of the bedroom watching with a curious mix of disgust and pity as Crowley brushed his mother’s hair. 

“You shouldn’t do that,” Bee told Crowley later. “She ought to do it herself. She can’t get stronger if you help her all the time.” 

Bee at just a week over fourteen, haggling in the backroom of the only funeral parlor in town for a better deal on a glossy wooden box.

“Don’t touch that,” Bee snapped as Crowley reached out a hand towards a vase of flowers in the corner. But he had already grabbed one, held it to his nose. It was artificial and smelled of nothing. He had stolen it anyway, shoved down the front of his shirt. Later, Bee slapped him for it. The angry red mark lived across the bridge of his nose for a week, but she let him keep the artificial flower. He kept it hidden in the top drawer of his dresser alongside his mother’s earrings.)

“It sounds like she’s a good older sister,” Aziraphale said. 

“She is,” Crowley agreed. “She handled things better than me.” 

(All of it—the caring, the loss, the exorbitant cost of the chemicals that had marinated his mother’s body while she was alive, the funeral director who hadn’t budged an inch on the price of the casket, the way Luke needed to be dragged up out of the armchair in the mornings, stripped and pushed into the shower like a child, the constant, shameful, never-ending pile of empty beer cans that Bee tossed in the woods out back so that the neighbors didn’t see their overflowing trash can—had made Bee hard just as much as it made Crowley soft. Crowley admired and resented her for it. Bee would have been excellent in the mines. On the days it was too difficult to get Luke up and into the shower, Bee should have gone instead of Crowley. But the jacket and helmet wouldn’t have fit her. They were his father’s size.)

***

Before the first descent, there was a grainy and unhelpful twelve minute safety video. There was the issuing of equipment. 

“Helmet,” Dagon said, throwing it onto the counter in the personnel office. 

“Helmet,” Crowley repeated, demonstrating excellent closed loop communication, as discussed in the video. 

“Canteen for water,” Dagon said. 

“Canteen.” 

“I assume you know this, but don’t fill it up at the tap, use that instead,” Dagon gestured to a water cooler in the corner. “The mine ain’t liable for whatever sickness you’ll get if you drink the tap water. I’m legally obligated to tell you that.” 

Crowley swallowed. “Right.” 

“Self Rescue Device.” Dagon tossed a canister with a long strap onto the counter. 

Crowley picked it up, hesitated. It did not look like the self rescue device in the video. 

Dagon shrugged. “It’s an older model, but we work with what we got. Put it around your waist. Air gets bad down there, you open up the canister and wear the mask. It won’t give you oxygen, but it will filter out the CO2 and methane. For a few hours at least.” 

“Self Rescue Device,” Crowley said, strapping it into place.

“Headlamp and extra batteries.” 

(Years earlier, before the beer cans that littered the kitchen floor, before the constant smell of chemicals than hung in the house from the chemo, Luke would bring his helmet home in the evenings, set it on the table with the headlamp turned on and all the other lights in the room turned off. He made a shadow puppet show on the wall with his fingers. Bee had grown out of it quickly, flounced off to her room to read magazines and do who knew what else, but Crowley had been entranced by the way his father’s knobby fingers twisted themselves into outlandish shapes, birds and biplanes soaring through the sky.) 

“Headlamp,” Crowley turned it on and off, clipped it to the helmet. “Extra batteries.” He put them in his pocket. 

“High-vis jacket,” Dagon handed over a blue and orange jacket that looked like it belonged in the 1950s and reeked of diesel. 

“I’m not wearing that.” 

“Suit yourself,” Dagon shrugged and smiled. His teeth were stained and very sharp. “It’ll be your funeral, not mine, when there’s a collapse and they can’t see where you are to dig you out. Might not even be a funeral. Might never find your body.” 

Crowley put the jacket on. 

Dagon stared at him across the pockmarked counter. 

“High-vis jacket,” Crowley said, rolling his eyes. 

Dagon took a stub of pencil lead from behind his ear and checked off the appropriate boxes on a clipboard. 

“No mule then?” Crowley couldn’t help but ask. “How about my pick axe? Not even a kiss goodbye?” 

Dagon didn’t crack a smile. Crowley turned to go and was nearly at the door when Dagon spoke. 

“Word of advice boy, not that you’ll heed it—keep your head down and do your job. Put in your time, get paid, don’t be clever.” Dagon coughed, rustled through a stack of papers. “Now, I know you don’t have a certification for underground work, but you’re not the first and you won’t be the last to figure out a way in despite that. I’ll keep track of your hours so you can make official and get the paper when you join us full time next year.”

Standing there under Dagon’s fishlike, dispassionate stare, Crowley felt bile rise up in his throat at the thought of hours counted, of preparing for a life lived underground. He hadn’t yet stepped into the elevator, hadn’t yet experienced its slow descent, but even out here in the clear October air he felt as though the weight of Eden Mountain was already pressing down on him, crushing the breath from his lungs. 

“No need,” he said. “I’ll be gone from here by next year.” 

***

“It can’t be easy,” Aziraphale murmured. “Without your mother.” 

“We get by,” Crowley said, kicking his feet up on the pew in front of him and trying not to show how itchy it made him, the kindness, the understanding in Aziraphale’s voice. “It’s not so bad, when you get used to it.” 

“No, I mean—” Aziraphale’s eyes were a soft grey blue. Crowley couldn’t look at them. “My mother’s gone too.”

“What happened?” 

“She ran off.”

“Well, she’s still alive, isn’t she?” Crowley tried not to sound bitter. “You could write to her or—” 

“She didn’t leave an address. Really made a clean break of it. I don’t even know what state she’s in these days. Couldn’t stand living with my dad. Couldn’t stand living with—with us, really.” 

“I’m sure it wasn’t anything to do with you—” 

“I know she loved me. Well, I know she loved Gabriel anyway. But, she was from the city, New York. She lived all her life there and met my dad when he was on a business trip and they got married in six weeks, she’d never even been to West Virginia before he brought her home. And she hated it here. She hated the mountains and the mud and the cold winters. And my father is well…I don’t blame her, but I wish—” 

Aziraphale swallowed and looked out at the leafless trees all around them. Crowley fought the sudden and absurd urge to put an arm around his broad shoulders. “I just wish she’d write sometimes. That’s all.” 

***

_—The “critical angle of attack” refers to the angle of attack which generates the maximum lift coefficient. In a fixed wing aircraft, any angle of attack greater than the critical angle of attack will be considered the “stall—_

“—are you listening to me boy?” 

“What?” Crowley hadn’t realized Hastur was talking to him. 

“I was saying it’s nice, seein’ a young man carrying on the family tradition,” Hastur said. In the shadows, Ligur nodded approvingly. “I know your dad ain’t been well recently, but he’s a real legend down here. He saved my skin a few years back, pulled me and a few others outta a collapse with his bare hands.” 

“I know.” 

Crowley remembered. Luke had twisted his back in the rubble, digging Hastur and the others out. He had treated his back pain himself, first at the bar downtown and then when his unpaid tabs made that impossible, with whatever he could stock in the refrigerator. The finger puppet shows had stopped. Outings for ice cream had stopped. Eventually, other things started—the yelling, the black eyes, the missing shifts, the bills piling up by the front door. It probably wasn’t fair to blame Luke for it. It certainly wasn’t fair to blame Hastur, but Crowley didn’t care.

Crowley’s eyes flitted down to the missing fingers of Hastur’s right hand, to the scar running up his wrist and under his jacket. Crowley knew Hastur meant well, but he couldn’t look at him with anything other than revulsion. 

“Stick with us, we’ll show you how it’s done down here. You’ll make a fine miner,” Hastur said. “Coal’s in your blood.” 

“Good honest work, digging coal. It’s hard, but this country needs us to keep the lights on up there,” Ligur said, pointing at the sky somewhere beyond the wire ceiling of the cage. 

They were trying, Crowley realized, to be nice. It didn’t matter; the words filled him with a nameless sort of dread. He couldn’t help the response that coiled in his chest like a striking snake. 

“Thanks guys, but I’ve got bigger plans. I’m not gonna be down here for long. I’m going to the Air Force Academy next year.” 

Ligur laughed, and then the other men started up, and then the entire crew was laughing. Only Hastur and Eric didn’t laugh. 

“Air Force Academy,” Ligur muttered, wiping at his eyes. “What a hoot.” 

The cage stopped moving; a buzzer indicated that it had settled at the bottom of the vertical shaft. The other men started to file out into the access shaft, sloping gently down towards the coal face in the darkness below. 

Hastur hadn’t moved. “Bigger plans, huh. Think you’re too good for this kinda work, is that it?” 

Crowley squinted into the brightness of Hastur's headlamp. Hastur wasn’t even that much older than Crowley, only in his thirties, but his face was lined and worn in the harsh artificial light. In that moment, Crowley hated him. 

“I don’t want to waste the rest of my life in a big fucking hole in the ground. And I sure as hell won’t stand here being grateful for the opportunity. I ain’t you Hastur. I ain’t my dad neither.” 

Hastur’s face twisted in rage. “You ain’t better than this. You ain’t better than us. Don’t you forget it.” He spat onto the metal floor of the cage and then was gone into the darkness. 

“Hey, uh,” it was Eric, standing at Crowley’s elbow. “For what it’s worth, I think you could make it in the Air Force Academy, you really could. You were always so smart in school.” 

“Thanks, Eric,” Crowley muttered, still staring after Hastur, cursing himself. Hastur had a lot of friends in the mine and, if rumor could be believed, a penchant for violence below ground and arson above. He was a bad man to make an enemy of, down here in the dark tunnels, where anything could happen. 

“Ready to get to it then?” Eric asked. 

Crowley sighed and reached up to turn on his headlamp, followed Eric down into the heart of Eden Mountain. 

***

Crowley looked up through the missing roof of the church at the leafless trees. Their branches swayed in the slight November breeze, silhouetted like shadow puppets against the darkening sky. 

“I hate it down there,” Crowley said, and then wondered why he had said it. He didn’t expect someone like Aziraphale to understand. Only—

Only— 

Aziraphale’s eyes were very blue and very kind. They were soft the way Crowley’s mother’s eyes had been. 

Only—

Aziraphale had been so gentle when he’d asked about Crowley’s mother. Aziraphale was always so gentle with Crowley. It made Crowley weak, it made Crowley want something large and nameless that he could only look at out of the corner of his eye or not at all. 

Aziraphale cared. It was unusual. It made Crowley squirm and itch like a bad sunburn, it made him feel like a caught fish thrashing uselessly in the water, as he was slowly but inexorably reeled towards shore. It made him feel—good. 

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said, low and simple, and he shifted closer on the bench. 

He could have said something else. He could have said, _I understand_ , which would have been easier to brush off, because they both would have known it wasn’t true. He could have said, _it’s only temporary_ , which would have done nothing but raise the horrifying question in Crowley’s mind, _but what if it’s not temporary?_ Instead he said, _I’m sorry_. 

“Thank you,” Crowley muttered, looking down. He noticed suddenly that his fingers had left dark streaks on the white paper of the problem sets. It had been a bad week for bills—ground rent and electric both past due—so Crowley had skipped school today to work, come here straight from a shift at the mine. He had washed his hands afterwards, but the coal had a way of getting into cracks in his skin and under his nails, onto everything he touched. 

Aziraphale was wearing a pressed white shirt. Crowley thought about touching him high on his neck, where the collar of it peeked out from under his varsity jacket, wondered if his fingers would leave a mark there, too. 

“I know it’s not the same,” Aziraphale said, “but if it matters, I hate it too. I don’t want to be a mine engineer, not really. But my father is so proud of Gabriel I thought, maybe he’d be proud of—” Aziraphale looked away. “Well, it doesn’t matter.” 

“What would you do instead?” Crowley asked. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Aziraphale said, but he said it as if he wanted Crowley to coax an answer out of him, so Crowley did. 

“I bet you do know.” 

“It’s very silly, really.” 

“No go on, tell me, I won’t laugh.” 

“I just think it might be nice to—to do something with my hands. No, I don’t mean...not like working underground in a mine,” Aziraphale added quickly, catching the sidelong glance Crowley threw at him. “Something more intricate than that.” 

He had the right sort of hands for delicate work, Crowley thought, looking at where they lay clasped in Aziraphale’s lap. The skin on the backs of them was nearly translucent. The blue veins there were prominent now, as they always were in the evenings when Aziraphale came to him after an hour and a half in the weight room with the football team. One of Aziraphale’s ring fingers had gotten jammed a week ago--a fumbled catch in last Friday’s game. There was a dark bruise around the knuckles. Crowley had a sudden and irrational surge of anger against whoever had thrown the football. Didn’t they know that Aziraphale’s hands ought to be treated with care?

“Here, look, this is the sort of thing I mean--” Aziraphale’s hands took flight from his lap like startled birds. He rummaged around in his backpack and pulled out a leatherbound book. “Agnes has been teaching me about restoring books. She helped me redo the inside cover on this one. It’s from the 1880s. I made my own marbleized paper and cut it to the right size, and then resewed the binding with the original covers.” 

Aziraphale held it out, but Crowley didn’t take it. 

“Dirty hands,” he muttered. “Show me?” 

Aziraphale slid closer, held the book open over Crowley’s lap. Crowley recognized the author’s name from their American Studies class, but not the title— _Leaves of Grass_. The leather cover was polished, the smell of fresh glue wafted up from the opened spine, the end papers were thick cardstock covered in swirling green ink. Crowley thought he could feel the warmth from the backs of Azirphale’s hands on his thighs, then thought, _that’s ridiculous you’re wearing thick jeans and his hands are inches away and air is terrible at conducting heat—_

Crowley hovered a finger over the pages, but didn’t touch. “This is the kind of thing you want to do? Put musty old books back together? Sell them to people the way Agnes does?”

Aziraphale ran one pensive finger along the worn edge of the leather cover. “Well, not just books I suppose, but yes.” 

“Why not just sell new books?” 

“Ah, well, I don’t know--” Aziraphale’s brow furrowed. “I suppose I think there’s something rather nice about keeping things just as they are, restoring them with all their history intact.” 

“Too bad some things are beyond fixing,” Crowley said, thinking of how the pieces of the second model airplane had been ground deep into the shag carpet in the living room, how hard it was to pick them out. 

“One of the first things Agnes told me about restoring books is that very few things are truly beyond fixing,” Aziraphale said, shutting _Leaves of Grass_ and putting it back in his bag. 

Crowley was going to say something flippant, make a joke, something, anything that would cut through the strange but not unpleasant tightness that had risen in his chest. Instead he found himself saying, “I used to make model airplanes. When I was younger. I bet you’d be good at building them. Lots of gluing. Tiny pieces, you know? I could show you one of them sometime, we could fly it together. If you wanted.” 

Aziraphale beamed at him. The sun had slipped below the horizon, the woods had fallen into a blue, twilight hush, but Aziraphale’s smile cut through the evening like the brightness of a headlamp underground. “There’s nothing I’d like more,” Aziraphale promised in that oddly charming, formal way of his.

Crowley knew it was dangerous to care. The more you cared—about things, about people—the more dangerous it was. He had learned this lesson the hard way, first at the funeral and then later, trying fruitlessly to glue smashed pieces of balsa wood and aluminum back together. It was just as ingrained inside him as the four forces of flight. As they made their way down the trail in the dark hours later than they had planned, problem set still incomplete, Crowley thought, not for the first time, that Aziraphale was very dangerous indeed. 

***

The mountain disgorged its men. Dirty, gasping with relief and trying not to show it, Crowley stepped outside into the clean air. The first ascent. It was over. 

The men dispersed across the yard. Eric clapped him on the shoulder. “First day is the hardest.” 

“Is it?” Crowley asked. His limbs felt wobbly as a kitten’s. He sucked in deep, grateful breaths of the cool fall air. 

“Nope,” Eric said cheerfully, “the second day is even worse, and then the third, and the fourth, and...you get the idea. See you around Crowley.” Eric wandered off with a wave. Crowley watched him go, hugged the jacket tight around his chest. He felt as though the low roof of the mine was still hanging over him, as though the walls on either side were still there closing tighter and tighter around him—

Abruptly, Crowley realized he was going to be sick. “Fuck,” he gasped to no one in particuar and made a beeline for the toilets. 

After he had thoroughly emptied the contents of his stomach, Crowley leaned back against the wall of the cubicle and tried to catch his breath. Someone had carved a crude dick and balls into the soft wood of the stall door. He traced it with his fingernail and took small sips of water from his canteen until he felt reasonably certain he wasn’t going to throw up again. Finally, he pushed the door of the stall open, walked towards the exit. A sound from the attached locker rooms, which ought to have been empty between shifts, stopped his motion. A steady, rhythmic slap, a low, masculine moan; a high needy gasp in answer. Crowley’s subconscious knew what he was hearing before his conscious recognized it. Some sixth sense tried to urge Crowley’s legs towards the door, tried to encourage him to leave now, before whoever he was overhearing discovered him there. But, curiosity had always been one of Crowley’s biggest flaws. He turned away from the door and rounded the corner into the locker room. 

The two men were immediately recognizable, even though their faces were turned away. So, too, was what they were doing together. Ligur’s broad back, jacket off, undershirt stretched tight on his shoulder blades, jeans pushed low on his hips out of the way. The shock of Hastur’s prematurely white hair, his helmet with it’s foreman’s decal dropped carelessly on the bench beside them. Hastur’s scarred hand clawing at the wall of lockers in pleasure, the harsh noise of their breaths echoing in the empty room. 

Crowley dropped his canteen in surprise. It clattered on the floor. Hastur and Ligur shoved away from each other, turned as one toward the noise, hands scrabbling at belt buckles, pulling up boxers, pulling down shirts. Dark eyes locked onto Crowley’s and for a split-second Crowley was frozen in terror. Then Hastur let out an awful shout and lunged. Crowley ran. 

Hastur caught him right outside the block of toilets, pushed him roughly against the brick wall. 

“You ain’t seen nothing,” Hastur said, twisting a hand in the front of Crowley’s shirt. “Tell me you ain't seen nothing.” 

Hastur was dangerous and angry, but underneath the anger, Crowley could see that he was frightened and even further underneath his fear, that he was ashamed. Crowley felt a sudden and unexpected surge of pity which he quickly stamped out like the embers of a finished cigarette. This was what he needed, after all, something to hold over Hastur. Leverage to keep himself alive underground, to manipulate a powerful enemy. 

“I’d be careful how you treat me, Hastur,” Crowley jerked out of the other man’s grasp. “You don’t know what I’ll say. Or to whom.” 

He walked away and didn’t look back, left Hastur behind him, snarling like a chained dog in the yard. But later, lying awake under the stained ceiling of his bedroom, he thought _you fool, don’t you see? Don’t you see we're the same?_

Crowley thought about what he had witnessed, wondered if _this_ was the thing he wanted from Aziraphale. He tried to recall the details—a rough embrace, the loud slap of skin on skin, furtive heavy breathing, a room that stank of sweat and cigarettes. He tried to picture himself and Aziraphale tangled together like that. Couldn’t. The thing he felt for Aziraphale wasn’t—it wasn’t _like_ that. It couldn’t be done quickly, clothed,standing up in an outbuilding of a dingy out of date mining complex. It was all-consuming. Crowley listened to the sound of the neighbors, arguing loud and drunk outside his opened window, looked up at the stain on the ceiling, thought of the stains on his hands after coming home from a shift, and felt an old embarrassment stir in his chest. What he felt for Aziraphale was clean and bright, the furthest thing from that feeling. It wasn’t something to be ashamed of. 

The act itself though, the slick grind flesh on flesh, the idea of pressing so close to Aziraphale that one of them was inside the other; that thought was not….unpleasant. Crowley closed his eyes, let the scene blur and shift, imagined instead of a filthy locker room, a blanket spread out in the back of a pickup truck, the stars spread out in the night sky above. He imagined pressing Aziraphale back softly on the blanket, touching him gently, waiting for Aziraphale’s lips to unfurl into a slow, private smile, waiting for him to lean up on his elbows, press that smile against Crowley’s own...

***

The third model airplane was a survivor. It was a replica of a spitfire from WWII, remote controlled to a distance of five hundred feet. It had taken Crowley nearly six months to put it together. He was proud of it, and embarrassed by how proud of it he was. He wanted Aziraphale to like it, and he was embarrassed by how much he wanted Aziraphale to like it. Handing it over to the tender mercy of those soft hands felt the way he imagined it might feel to strip naked under Aziraphale’s blue, assessing gaze. 

“It’s simply marvelous,” Aziraphale said, after a very long time inspecting. Crowley cringed in pleasure. “And it really flies?” 

“What do you take me for?” Crowley laughed, a little breathless. “Of course it flies.” 

“Show me?” Aziraphale asked, looking up at Crowley from under lowered lashes, suddenly shy. 

“Thought you’d never ask,” Crowley took the plane out of Azirphale’s hand to set it on the ground. Their fingers brushed briefly on the fuselage. 

An airplane is subject to four forces: lift, weight, drag, and thrust. The shape of an airplane wing—the airfoil—is designed to generate sufficient lift to overcome the weight of the plane. The model airplane weighed nearly nothing at all. The coefficient of lift carried it smoothly into the blue November sky. It sailed over the edge of the cliff, drifted on the wind above the river and the town of Eden far below, banked as Crowley coaxed it into a gentle circle with the remote control. 

“You fly it so effortlessly,” Aziraphale said, pink cheeked from the cold and smiling ear to ear. 

Crowley smiled back, he couldn’t help it. “Took a lot of practice to be honest.” And then, because he couldn’t resist showing off, he threw the little plane into a series of spiraling loops while Azirphale clapped and cheered as if they were at a real airshow, as if the model were a real airplane and Crowley was flying it from the cockpit not the ground. 

“Could I try?” Aziraphale asked. 

“Of course,” Crowley handed over the controller, then with a sudden, dizzying surge of bravery, put his hands over Aziraphale’s, which were exactly as soft as they looked. “Here, I’ll show you how.” 

Later, tossing and turning in his narrow bed beneath the stained ceiling, Crowley greeted the want that hovered in the corners of his vision like an old friend. He thought he could finally see the shape of it. It was shaped like hands tangling on the controls of the model airplane, like Aziraphale’s gasp when Crowley dropped the nose of the plane to make it look like it was crashing, his laughter when Crowley pulled the plane out of the dive and confessed to the trick. It was Aziraphale gazing at him like he was already a fighter jet pilot, like he already amounted to something, was worth something, like there was nothing else to prove. And yes, it was also shaped like two bodies intertwined together in the back of a pick-up truck, or maybe a bed somewhere—somewhere where the sheets were clean and white and the mattress was firm and Crowley’s hands wouldn’t leave coal-dark streaks on everything he touched. 

The want was bigger, even, than Crowley had feared. It was terrifying and overwhelming and strangely wonderful. It was as large and mysterious as Eden Mountain itself. 

_An airplane is subject to four forces: lift, weight, drag, and thrust. The shape of an airplane wing— the airfoil—is designed to generate sufficient lift to overcome the weight of the plane..._

The physics were complicated, but the concept was simple. A craft, traveling over the ground at a high enough speed, with its wing fixed at the proper angle, would experience a lift greater than its weight and thus leave behind everything dragging it down to the earth. 

Crowley lay on his back on the creaking mattress and thought about what he would leave behind. The low mutter of the ancient TV in the living room was audible through the wall, as it always was. Luke had probably passed out in front of it; Crowley couldn’t remember the last time someone had thought to turn it off. The indistinct sounds of shouting drifted through the small opened window, the slamming of a door, subsumed into the soothing hum of the insects high in the trees. 

Crowley couldn’t sleep. He got up and rifled through the top drawer of his dresser, pushed aside the artificial flower to pull out a secret packet of stolen cigarettes and a lighter. He slunk through the living room to the front door, bare feet soundless on the worn shag carpet, careful not to wake his father sprawled in the armchair, face grey in the light of the TV. Outside, Crowley lit a cigarette and smoked it, shivering, in just his boxers and a jacket he had grabbed from the hook by the door. He looked up at the bulk of Eden Mountain, rising above the miserable collection of mobile homes, rising above the entire miserable town, and hoped, as he had countless nights before, that it would be possible to move fast enough to escape its gravity. 

He remembered the delicate skin of Aziraphale’s hands, warm and live and quick beneath his own palms, and thought, for the first time, that there was something he might miss when he left this all behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone for reading! I’m really behind on replying to comments, but I love and cherish every one. Truly. 
> 
> I have been incredibly touched to get messages from some readers telling me about their own Appalachian childhoods, families, travel experiences. This story is deeply rooted in love of place, and it’s wonderful to hear it resonate with other people whose personal histories intersect with the Appalachian mountains! 
> 
> From here on out, I’ll be switching to an every other week update schedule, still on Sunday afternoons. I really want to do this story justice and make each chapter the best it can be, which means giving the writing (and myself) a bit more time to breathe between installments.


	7. True to Seed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I’d like to thank my beta [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for single-handedly turning this rambling mess of a chapter into something readable. 
> 
> Thanks also to everyone who has commented or otherwise told me they enjoyed the story so far. I feel so lucky to be part of such a generous and enthusiastic fandom! I hope that this chapter was worth the wait. 
> 
> Chapter CW: non graphic description of deer hunting, reference to unhealthy use of alcohol

The scrap of paper crinkled in Aziraphale’s waistcoat pocket as he dressed in the half light. He removed it, smoothed it out. It had the audacity to be solid and real beneath his fingers, despite the dreamlike quality of yesterday afternoon. In a looping, messy hand that was still painfully familiar even after all these years, it spelled out an address and a set of instructions. Something tender and sharp poked under Aziraphale’s ribs, cut through the background exhaustion of yet another sleepless night. 

Aziraphale attached the paper to the refrigerator with one of Agnes’ magnets (a cheery Captain Planet giving a thumbs up) and tried not to look at it while he went through the now familiar morning ritual of making enough coffee for two while pretending he was only making enough for himself. 

Tires crunched on gravel outside and Aziraphale hurried down the steep stairs. 

“That’s—that’s my fly. In your ear.”

“Sure is,” Crowley, loitering on the threshold of the bookshop, smirked that familiar close-lipped smile and accepted the cup of coffee Aziraphale held out. 

“My dear, it’s not meant to be an earring, it's meant to catch fish!” Something hot and possessive twisted low in Aziraphale’s gut, and hooked him beneath his feigned outrage. He couldn’t stop looking at the glint of his own creation, warmed against Crowley’s skin.

“Didn’t want to lose it. Besides,” Crowley shrugged. “Thought it looked nice.”

It—it _did_ look nice. That was the problem. Its copper shine set off the red of Crowley’s hair, accented the long, graceful curve of his neck. But it wouldn’t do to _dwell_. Aziraphale swallowed.

“Lots of work to do today. I’m afraid the third floor is an absolute nightmare after all the rain yesterday.”

Crowley’s smile faltered a little, but all he said was, “let’s get to it then.” 

They worked in silence, mopping the warped floorboards, picking up the detritus of ceiling tiles and insulation that had tumbled down from above. 

Something had changed between them, somewhere between the second and third cup of tea yesterday. Aziraphale couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, but the difference was incontrovertible. It was hanging in the air alongside the dust and mildew like the shift between seasons, the first crisp notes of fall on an August day. Which was ridiculous of course; summer had only just begun.

“Roofers are coming tomorrow,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley grunted in assent, bending at the waist to toss a piece of tile into the black trash bag Aziraphale held open. Crowley was wearing a dark t-shirt today with two white wings stenciled on the back. It was, Aziraphale thought, an unbearably cool shirt. Crowley had always been unbearably cool, entirely out of Aziraphale’s league, even in high school, even when it ought to have been the other way around—Aziraphale with his varsity jacket and Crowley with his hand-me-down jeans and poorly concealed bruises. The wings bunched and stretched over Crowley’s knife sharp shoulder blades like they were taking flight as he picked up trash in the gloom. 

***

All week, the scrap of paper with Crowley’s address hung on the refrigerator beneath Captain Planet’s determined smile. Aziraphale tried not to think about it. He tried not to think about Crowley stalking through the upper reaches of the bookshop. But even if he could avoid these thoughts during the day, he couldn’t keep them from his mind at night. 

The dreams that had plagued Aziraphale ever since left Eden Valley had changed now that he had returned. They rarely started at Wright Mines anymore. They began on the third floor staircase, or up against the shelves, or in a brightly lit kitchen on a winter morning more than thirty years ago. They began with grasping hands and hungry mouths. The beginning varied, but the ending was always the same. Golden eyes met his own. The slam of the cage door. The helicopter overhead, the sirens, the church bells that echoed mournfully through the valley and then down the river from town to town all across the state of West Virginia until Aziraphale awoke shaking and sweating and shamefully aroused. 

Aziraphale tried not to think about the paper on the refrigerator, about the dreams, about the long flowing lines of Crowley’s body and peppermint-tobacco scent of his hair. But it was hopeless. The man was always around. He took up space in the bookshop during the waking hours, drinking Aziraphale’s coffee, making Aziraphale laugh, a warm sort of shadow that Aziraphale couldn’t put out of his mind even when they were working separate rooms. At night, an imagined version of him _still_ took up space, in Aziraphale’s dreams, in his bed, in his body. Crowley was everywhere and nowhere at once. 

On Saturday, when Crowley wasn’t even meant to come by, Aziraphale poured two cups of coffee by force of habit and then drank them both while looking at the scrawled address. 

“My street isn’t on google maps,” Crowley had said as he wrote. The rain fell past the windows in sheets. In the cozy warmth of the kitchen, Crowley had been pink-cheeked, hair tousled from the shower, Aziraphale’s own jeans nearly falling off his hips. “You cross the one lane bridge over Bethlehem Creek and then it's the next left hand turn, a dirt road. Unmarked but you can’t miss it if you’re looking for it.”

 _You can’t miss it if you’re looking for it_ , Aziraphale thought and remembered Crowley’s smile, genuine and sharp beneath the sunglasses. 

Aziraphale knew what he wanted and it was to stay out of trouble, repair the bookshop, sell it to someone who would appreciate it, and drive away from West Virginia before the leaves turned. He had no desire to bring back old demons. He had meant it when he told Crowley that he wanted a blank slate. 

But he _liked_ Crowley, that was the thing. And Crowley, it seemed, genuinely liked him too, even now, even after—

Which was a mystery Aziraphale didn’t feel brave enough to unravel. 

With a burst of decisiveness that surprised himself, Aziraphale plucked the piece of paper off the fridge, held it in between his thumb and forefinger, and dialed the number still saved in his phone as _repairs_.

***

Crowley met him at the top of the long and winding driveway, one hand in his pocket, the other holding a cigarette to his lips, dark glasses obscuring his gaze, as always. He was wearing the usual black t-shirt and snakeskin boots, but this time paired with dark jeans cut off well above the knee to expose a startling expanse of thigh and calf. Aziraphale blinked at the long length of those legs and very nearly forgot how to put his car into park. 

“I’ll give you a quick tour, alright?” Crowley spoke rapidly, took off towards the cinder block house at the end of a stone path before Aziraphale had even gotten out of the car. Crowley practically ran away from him, long lanky strides eating up the ground. Aziraphale gathered his rod and tackle box from the back seat of his car and hurried after him, trying not to feel hurt by Crowley’s coldness. 

“The house is, well—I didn’t buy the place for the house, still got a lot of renovating to do,” Crowley muttered between drags of his cigarette as Aziraphale struggled to catch his breath. The house was set into the hill so that from the front it appeared to be one story, but as Aziraphale followed Crowley on the weedy path around to the back, a tar papered porch jutted out over the door to a full basement. Behind the house, a meadow filled with wildflowers—queen anne’s lace and black eyed susans and a lovely reddish sort of grass—dropped precipitously to the glassy surface of a large pond, ringed with dense forest. The still water reflected the flat top of Eden mountain, rising in the distance, clearly visible through a gap in the trees. To the right of the pond, the meadow gave way to a fenced pasture where several goats ambled next to a ramshackle barn. Beyond the barn, two squat greenhouses sat in a grove of trees. Another hill rose in the distance, a large corrugated metal pole barn at the top just against the tree line. 

Crowley sucked in his cheeks around his cigarette, blew smoke into the cloudless sky. “Well, this is the place.” 

“It’s beautiful,” Aziraphale said, quite sincerely. 

Crowley made a series of noises that were not quite words, stamped out his first cigarette on the stones, and lit another one. 

“Is that the orchard, down there in the valley? Oh, I do hope you’ll show me your trees.” 

Crowley shifted from one foot to the other. “‘Course, yeah.” 

Aziraphale followed him down towards the pond through the high grasses. The grass parted in front of Crowley. Aziraphale trailed in his wake, the sweet smell of the meadow hanging in the air, mingling with the faint whiff of Crowley’s cigarette.

“Set your stuff down here,” Crowley gestured towards a dock extending out into the pond. “If you like.” 

Aziraphale put the rod and reel down. Crowely had already walked over to the pasture and was leaning against the fence. His long legs were all angles in the sunlight. His hair was fire red. The fishing fly still dangled from his ear, bright as the lit end of his cigarette. Aziraphale watched him for a long moment from the dock and, for the first time since that day on the porch, didn’t bother trying to tell himself he wasn’t watching

“This is Francis and Ash and Harry and Ted,” Crowley said when Aziraphale had joined him. Aziraphale reached out and gingerly patted the bony nose that stuck itself through the rails of the fence, unsure who it belonged to. 

“Do you milk them?” 

“Nah, they’re all wethers. Strictly fiber goats. There’s a woman up the road who spins their hair and I sell that.” Crowley scratched one of the goats absently behind the ear. “I’ve got a few skeins left over from last year. I ought to give you one. For your knitting.” 

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly—” Aziraphale started but Crowley had already hopped off the fence and was moving in the direction of the greenhouses. 

Aziraphale gave Francis, or possibly Ash, another pat and followed after Crowley, trying not to be put out by his strange, curt attitude. 

Crowley leaned dramatically against the glass of one of the greenhouses. “You wanted to see the trees? Here they are.” 

He had finished the second cigarette and crammed both his hands into the small pockets of his cut off shorts. Beneath his sunglasses, his jaw was tight, lips a thin line. With sudden, dawning realization, Aziraphale understood that Crowley was _nervous_. It made sense then, his odd dismissiveness, bitten off sentences, the two cigarettes, the way his fingers twitched in his pockets as though itching for a third. In a rush of sympathy, Aziraphale realized the entire week he had spent worrying about coming here, Crowley had spent worrying about what it would be like to _have him here_ and they were both such fools. The sun was warm on Aziraphale’s back, Crowley’s farm was idyllic. It was a perfect summer day and there was no one in Eden, or quite possibly anywhere, that Aziraphale would rather be spending it with. Now, in the bright sunlight, it seemed absolutely laughable to have been afraid of visiting Crowley’s farm, laughable that even now Crowley was chewing his lip, looking for all the world like he was ready for Aziraphale to strike him. Didn’t he see how perfect and wonderful it all was? 

Aziraphale reached out, just two fingers, and touched the back of Crowley’s arm, just above his knobby elbow. Crowley’s mouth parted ever so slightly. Aziraphale withdrew his hand quickly. 

“It’s lovely my dear. This farm, the pond, the goats, the orchard. I can’t believe you built this all yourself.” 

“Took a while.” 

“I’m sure.” 

Aziraphale stared at Crowley’s face. The serpent tattoo that curled by his ear looked faded in the bright sunlight--it must be at least several years old. The scales bled into one another, curved over the rough scar tissue that disappeared behind the dark lenses. Crowley stood still, let Aziraphale look at him. Aziraphale felt sure he was staring back just as intently, even though the dark glasses made it impossible to know for certain. 

After a long while, Crowley cleared his throat. “So, would you like to see the seedlings?” 

“Of course.” 

Rows of young trees in small pots lined the walls and center of the greenhouse, narrow aisles between them. 

“What do you call them?” Aziraphale asked, bending down to touch the delicate, almost transparent leaves of one of the saplings. 

Crowley broke into a sharp grin, the first true smile since Aziraphale had arrived. “Original sin.”

“Original sin apples, grown in Eden. How marvelous.”

Crowley inspected his nails, which were painted a deep red again. “Well, I thought it was clever. Anyway, it worked well for marketing.” 

“You grow them all yourself from seed?” 

“No, it’s not possible actually.” Crowley stepped in close behind him, chest inches from Azirahale’s back. If Aziraphale took a deep breath they might touch. “Apples aren’t true to seed,” Crowley continued. “No guarantee that a seed will end up bearing the same variety of fruit as the tree it came from. You have to graft a generic apple rootstock with the scion of the kind of tree you’re trying to produce.” One long, elegant finger reached around Aziraphale to point at a white piece of tape wrapped about midway up the slim trunk of the sapling. “I grafted all of these about a month ago. I got lucky, nearly all of them have already taken. These wraps will come off about mid-July and then I’ll move them to bigger pots to mature for a year and sell them next spring.” 

The red of Crowley’s nail stood out starkly against the white tape where the tree had been cut open, reformed into something other than its nature.

“So in this case,” Aziraphale said softly, “the apple actually does fall quite far from the tree?” He was looking at the sapling but he was thinking about Gabriel knocking books off the shelves in his shop ( _his shop?_ When had Agnes’ shop become _his shop?_ ), putting them back in all the wrong order. 

“Yeah,” Crowley said, soft too. Aziraphale wondered if he was thinking about roots and scions, if he was thinking about Luke and Bee. “It does, doesn’t it?” 

*** 

The rod whipped forward too quickly in Aziraphale’s hand; most of the line ended up pooled at his feet instead of in the water. He took a deep breath, squared his feet on the dock, reeled it in and tried again. He took a longer pause at the end of the back cast, allowing the line to hang suspended in the air for a beat of his heart, two beats, before the forward motion of his hand formed it into a slow lazy loop that cut across the blue sky and shot out over the water. Better this time. A bullfrog called from the reeds. Aziraphale stripped the line back in again, trying to make the fly at the end—a lead and bucktail imitation of a minnow—twitch like a real live swimming thing. Hours had passed, but it hardly felt like any time at all. Aziraphale was pleasantly lost in the repetitive motion, the rich, earthy scent that rose from the mud by the dock, the warmth of the sun on his back. 

The smell of fresh cut grass drifted from where Crowley's tractor made passes back and forth through the pasture. Aziraphale kept glancing over. It seemed Crowley had mowed the same area more than once. Gratification flared up at the idea that Crowley was orbiting him out here in the open air the same way Aziraphale had orbited Crowley in the bookshop that first week without quite meaning to, unable to come closer, unable to drift away. 

Aziraphale was still looking over at Crowley, fixated again on those long, bare legs, when he felt a sudden tug on the end of the line, still drifting in the pond. He nearly dropped the rod in surprise, then hastened to reel it in. A small bluegill, no larger than the palm of his hand, struggled fruitlessly in the water. 

“I’ve got one,” Aziraphale called in absolute shock. The sound of the tractor cut out, and then Crowley was there, smelling of gasoline and grass clippings and sweat, gasping with delight as he looked over Aziraphale’s shoulder at the little fish. 

“You’re an expert already!” 

“I’m no such thing, this fish is tiny and anyway, I caught it while distracted it hardly counts.” 

“‘Course it counts, you caught it!” 

“Come on, will you help me get it off the line?” Aziraphale held the fish out of the water, and was immediately distressed at the way it flopped and gasped in the air. He put it quickly back in the water, still hooked. “Could you, oh, I don’t like to see it suffer—” 

“Sure, sure.” Then Crowley was lying down on the dock, shorts hugging tight to the curve of his ass. Aziraphale glanced down and immediately tried to look anywhere else--the reeds waving in the breeze, the tops of the trees, the green-black water of the pond. Crowley’s long lithe arms broke the surface of the pond and with deft, quick movements he smoothed back the fins on the fish, cupped it in one hand and pulled the hook out with the other. He held the fish in his hand underwater, turned to look up at Aziraphale. “Haven’t fished much, have you?” 

“You know I grew up hunting instead.”

(The edge of a meadow at dusk. The crisp smell of autumn, red and yellow leaves drifting down in the cold air. Gabriel at his shoulder, helping him line up the shot. 

“You’ve got him,” Gabriel whispered. Aziraphale knew he was right. The stag was barely thirty feet away, but he hadn’t noticed them. He bent his head in the long grass. The broad side of his chest, his heart, was centered beneath the simple bead sight on Aziraphale’s shotgun. 

“Now,” Gabriel said. “Come on, now.” 

Azirahale tried to pull the trigger but nothing happened. 

“He’s right in front of you,” Gabriel hissed. “Do it.” 

Aziraphale took in one shuddering breath and blew it out. The finger on the trigger was someone else’s. He couldn’t make it move. The deer still did not notice them, still did not run. Why didn’t it run? 

“Do it,” Gabriel said again and Aziraphale didn’t and then Gabriel was shoving him roughly to the side, shouldering his own gun, and it was over in less than a heartbeat, the blast ringing loud off the side of the mountain. 

“Aziraphale’s first buck,” Gabriel lied easily to their father when they had returned home and were standing in the driveway under the bright white floodlights, still reeking of fresh blood. “Took him down all by himself.” 

Their father nodded approvingly and Gabriel clapped Aziraphale on the shoulder with his large hand. But later that evening, he pushed Aziraphale roughly into the shadows under the staircase and hissed, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” 

Aziraphale didn’t know what was wrong with him. He didn’t know, and he did. 

“I won’t disappoint you again,” Aziraphale said instead of answering.

“No,” Gabriel stepped back out of his space, looked in Aziraphale’s face and seemed satisfied by what he saw. “You won’t.”) 

“You must think me very silly indeed, but I don’t like catching them very much.” Aziraphale said, watching Crowley move the fish gently back and forth in the pond, passing water over its gills. “I don’t like seeing them hurt.” 

The lines around Crowley’s mouth softened. “Course you don’t. Don’t worry about this guy though, he’ll be fine. Do you want to let him go? He’s your fish.” 

“I—oh, alright.” Aziraphale set down the rod, crouched close to Crowley. 

“Put your hand over mine,” Crowley said, “otherwise he’ll swim away before I give him to you.” 

Aziraphale put his hand into the sun-warmed water at the surface of the pond. He leaned closer to reach until his body was pressed against Crowley’s on the dock, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. He closed his fingers over Crowley’s, his heartbeat loud in his throat. Crowley’s hand was live and smooth beneath his, the fish was live and smooth beneath Crowley’s hand. For a moment, they stayed like that, life holding life holding life, then the fish gave a great flutter for such a small creature, and was gone into the green darkness of the pond. Crowley opened his empty hand like the unfurling of a flower andAziraphale opened his too.Their fingers tangled together, ghostly green in the water. Aziraphale’s heart beat once, twice. Their hands were still touching. Crowley wiggled his fingers, throwing up a ripple on the surface, moving Aziraphale’s pinky finger so that the sun glancing through the water shone on his signet ring. Aziraphale jerked his hand away and stood, wiping his palm on his jeans. Crowley stretched beneath him, pulled himself lazily to his feet, and didn’t seem to notice anything odd about Aziraphale’s hasty retreat. 

“What an amazing first catch, should have gotten a picture.” 

“Oh, it was really quite a small fish.” 

“You call that small? A great big bugger like that? Twenty pounds easy! Thirty! I didn’t know I had such a monster lurking in my pond.” 

“Oh, hush,” Aziraphale said, desperately charmed and equally desperate not to show it. “You’re making fun.” 

“Am not,” Crowley said, pink-cheeked, smiling. "I thought he was going to break your rod in half.”

"My rod's made of stronger stuff than that," Aziraphale said, then flushed. He really hadn’t meant it to sound so suggestive.

Crowley didn't seem to notice, or perhaps he had, because the next thing he said was, "come up the hill, I want to show you something."

Aziraphale’s heart leapt back into his throat. He set the rod down on the dock and followed the sway of Crowley's hips away from the pond. To Aziraphale’s surprise, Crowley did not lead him to the house, but instead up the other hill, towards the corrugated metal pole barn that stood at the edge of the woods.

 _I won't go inside_ , Aziraphale thought. _I'll let him down at the doorway. It will be dark inside and it would be easy to get carried away. Anyone could. Who knows what I would want to do if I—_

"Come in," Crowley said, hauling open the sliding door with a great rumble.

Aziraphale went.

Inside, the barn smelled of engine oil and metal, not of hay and sawdust as Aziraphale had expected. He blinked in the darkness. 

"Hang on, let me just—"

Crowley was very close, fumbling with something on the wall. Aziraphale felt rooted to the spot just inside the entryway, eyes adjusting to the dark. Standing here, on this threshold, called up the memory of countless other such thresholds crossed in Aziraphale’s life. All the other men who Aziraphale had followed into dim bar bathrooms and hotel rooms and unfamiliar bedrooms had been strangers. But Crowley was the furthest thing from a stranger. His head was a dark familiar shape, inclining closer. Aziraphale’s heart jumped wildly, a sudden surge of adrenaline and then—

The lights came on.

"See," Crowley said proudly, throwing his arms wide to gesture at a half-built metal scaffold at the far end of the barn. "What do you think?"

Aziraphale opened and closed his mouth, felt a horrible affinity for the gasping fish caught in Crowley’s firm grip at the dock. 

“What—what is it?” Aziraphale asked. _I'm feeling relief_ , he told himself sternly. _I am glad he wasn't taking me here to kiss me, he wasn't planning to have me in some haystack or up against a tractor. I had no intention of letting him anyway._

"It's an airplane. Well, sort of anyway. It’s going to be. Guess it doesn’t really look like one quite yet.” Crowley frowned at the machine at the far end of the barn. “I'm building it out of a kit, but it's taking a while. Got the kit used and some of the parts are missing."

Now that Crowley had told him what it was meant to be, Aziraphale could see the shape of it. A long body, half covered by aluminium. A tail. Two wings that Aziraphale hadn’t initially noticed, disconnected from the main body of the plane and propped up against the wall. It _was_ an airplane, just unlike any other airplane Aziraphale had ever seen. There wasn’t, for example, a cockpit. Just two seats covered by plastic sheeting in the middle of an empty metal cage behind an engine that looked like it might struggle to power a lawnmower.

"Will it fly?" 

“What kind of a question is that! Of course it will fly. Eventually.” 

Aziraphale walked closer, aware of Crowley's eyes on the back of his neck. 

"Can I touch it?" Aziraphale turned to look at Crowley who nodded tightly. Aziraphale ran a hand over the sharp edge at the tail, reminded of the sharp edge of Crowley's smile, his true smile, the one which appeared only rarely.

"Forgive me if this is insensitive but…" Aziraphale chose his words carefully. "Can _you_ fly it?"

Crowley sidled closer, hands in his pockets. "Not insensitive. Do you know there are some airplanes you don’t actually need a pilot’s license to fly?” 

“Really?” 

“Really. This isn’t one of them though.” 

“Oh, that’s too bad.” Aziraphale said, a great swell of pity rising in his breast. 

But Crowley was still grinning at him. “You forgot to ask me the important bit.” 

“I did?” 

“You forgot to ask if I had a pilot’s license.” 

“Do you?” Aziraphale asked, even as he realized with a sudden surge of joy, surprising in its ferocity, where Crowley was leading him. 

Crowley raised an eyebrow above the line of his sunglasses and leaned into Aziraphale’s space. “I do.” 

Before Crowley had flicked on the lights in the barn, Aziraphale had thought that Crowley was going to kiss him. But this—the cockiness, the confidence, the realization of a dream imparted like a salacious secret, was so much _more_ than a kiss. It was as though the past thirty years had never happened. Crowley looked at him the way he had looked at Aziraphale in high school, conspiratorially, like he was letting Aziraphale in on something intensely private, sharing a hidden stash of happiness. He looked at him like they were the only two people who mattered in the whole world. It was incredibly, devastatingly attractive, even after all this time. Aziraphale wanted to do all sorts of wild things, to push Crowley down on the concrete floor, to lick the pulse that jumped at his neck, to press his lips to Crowley's, greedy for a taste of that infectious, bubbling joy.

Instead, Aziraphale folded his hands together in front of himself and asked, "When did you get your pilot's license?"

"A few years back. Came into some money in the early 2000s, could finally pay to do it. I can't fly commercially or in the military because well—" Crowley's happiness dimmed for a moment and Aziraphale felt the loss of it like the loss of the sun behind a cloud on a chilly day, then it emerged again. Crowley was smiling. "But for a private pilot's license, it turns out only having one eye is no problem. Had to get a special medical exam and do a second check ride, that was all. I used to pay for flight hours out of a flying club in Morgantown, but then I thought, why not save the money up and build my own plane instead?” 

“But isn’t it dangerous?” Aziraphale looked doubtfully at the unfinished cockpit. “What if something goes wrong with the construction?” 

Crowley shrugged. “It’s not that much more dangerous than flying in general I’d say.” He pointed towards a massive sheaf of papers that lay on a workbench in the corner of the barn. “The plans are incredibly detailed. And every time I change something I triple check all the weight and aerodynamics calculations.” 

“Change something…?” Aziraphale felt a bit faint. 

“Ah,” Crowley murmured. “I haven’t even shown you the best part yet.” 

With a flourish, he pulled the plastic sheet off the seats. They were upholstered in fine leather. Aziraphale ran a hand down the backrest of one. The leather was soft and smooth. 

“I know a guy who scraps cars.” Crowley was grinning. “I told him to get in touch with me if anything interesting crossed his path. He gave me a call, said he had an original 1930s Bentley, said the engine was totaled but the interior was still nice, was I interested? Of course I said I was.” 

“These are...seats from a classic car?” 

“Sort of. The leather came from the car. The seat frames came from the airplane kit. And I’m using the rest of the car’s dashboard for the instrument panel. I call this plane the Bentley. It’s a little joke.” 

“The Bentley,” Aziraphale repeated, touching the seat again. “I like it.” 

“You—you do?” Crowley’s face was nearly impossible to read behind the sunglasses but something in the tilt of his head, the set of his jaw, looked fragile. 

“Of course I do. It’s absolutely wonderful. Who wouldn’t like it?” 

“Dunno,” Crowley said, pulling the sheeting back over the seats. “Haven’t showed nobody else. Haven’t told nobody else about it neither.” 

Aziraphale didn’t know what to say. He twisted the ring on his finger. “Thank you,” he said eventually, “for showing me.” 

Crowley grunted in response, walked slowly around the tail to inspect something on the other side of the plane. 

Aziraphale pointed to a flap on the tail. “What does this part do?” 

“Ah,” Aziraphale didn’t need to see Crowley’s eye to know that it must be lighting up. His whole face, even in the harsh fluorescent lighting, looked radiant. “That’s the rudder, here let me show you how it’s connected…” 

Minutes passed, consumed in the bright glow of Crowley’s obvious pride in the little craft, then Crowley was flicking the light off again, pulling the barn door shut behind them. 

They walked down past the orchard and the goat pasture to the pond. Aziraphale gathered his fishing things. This time, Crowley waited with him by the dock instead of going on ahead, walked with him shoulder to shoulder through the high grass back up to the house on the hill. 

“You’re…you’re happy.” Aziraphale couldn’t stop himself from saying. “You’re actually happy.” 

Crowley cocked his head at him. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

Crowley's happiness was a belated yet profound epiphany, the kind of realization that shifted the world on its axis. Indeed, why shouldn’t he be happy?" Aziraphale had spent the past two weeks—the past thirty years—weighed down by the certainty that Crowley’s life had been ruined forever in a mineshaft when they were eighteen, that he was trapped in Eden, trapped in the same sort of miserable existence as his father or sister. That Aziraphale had thought this for so long, and never questioned it, was absurd. Years and years had passed. There was no reason to think Crowley hadn’t moved on, hadn’t built a good life here for himself. 

The facts reframed themselves in a different light. Crowley was not trapped: he had chosen to stay in West Virginia. Crowley was clever, always had been. Of course he had found other ways to do the things he had always dreamed of. The knowledge that Crowley lived here on this idyllic piece of land that he owned, had a pilot’s license, and very soon would even have an airplane of his own ought to have come with some measure of relief. Instead Aziraphale felt wound tighter, ashamed of his assumptions, ashamed of the bright thread of jealousy that quickly followed in the wake of his astonishment. 

“I didn’t mean…” Aziraphale struggled for words. “I’m just glad, that’s all.”

And Aziraphale was glad, he was. Only—

It wasn’t entirely fair, was it? Crowley was the one, after all, who had been injured, not Aziraphale. How could it be so easy for him to let it go, to _be happy_ while Aziraphale spent sleepless nights with the cage door that slammed over and over again, the sound of helicopter blades, the ashy ground of the coal yard illuminated by bright emergency lights, indistinguishable from the surface of the moon.

Aziraphale watched Crowley unlock the front door. It swung open behind him as he turned to face Aziraphale and leaned in the doorway, a long, lithe shadow with legs that stretched for miles. 

"Want to come inside? I've got some sassafras tea if you like?" 

There was something in Crowley's flushed cheeks, the bob of his throat as he swallowed that made Aziraphale think of a fishing line caught on a hidden obstacle underwater, pulled tight in the effort to reel it in. The thrumming tension in the set of Crowley's shoulders was the ozone anticipation of a lightning strike, a copperhead in its nest curled beneath the hovering foot of an unsuspecting traveler. The invitation, this time, was unmistakable. 

Aziraphale could not follow Crowley inside. He could not cross a second threshold today. The storm would break. Crowley's body was surging with energy. Aziraphale could feel his own body yearning back, fingers and toes tingling now the way they always did these days at a drop in barometric pressure. Crowley still wanted him; it was naked and plain on his face. He was not trying to hide it. Crowley had wanted him since it had rained inside the bookshop, since he had stepped out of Aziraphale’s bedroom in Aziraphale’s clothes. Maybe he had wanted him even earlier, perhaps he had already started wanting that very first day standing on the porch, helping Aziraphale clean up broken glass. Aziraphale had known then and also hadn't, had encouraged Crowley and held him at arm's length, all without letting ever himself understand what he was doing. But he understood now. If he were to follow Crowley inside the dark doorway that gaped behind him they might have tea, or they might not, but either way, they would end up in bed together. 

For a moment, Aziraphale allowed himself to consider it. A brief dalliance amidst humid sheets, perhaps later some mutually enjoyable activities in the meadow or pole barn, then a summer of stolen moments together, a play at domesticity, carefully concealed from the outside world, understood to be over as soon as autumn came. But casual flings were hard for Aziraphale these days, quite inconceivable actually. Sex required a level of directness Aziraphale hadn’t been comfortable attempting for the past twenty years. It hadn't ever felt worth it before to try. He hadn't trusted anyone enough. And there, of course, was the catch: Aziraphale still trusted Crowley, trusted him so much that he could imagine telling him the second greatest secret of his life, and this level of trust, their whole history together really—the _first_ greatest secret of Aziraphale's life—made anything casual a complete impossibility.

"Actually, I think I had better," Aziraphale gestured helplessly back to his SUV parked in the gravel drive, fighting the urge to say something absurd like _go home to feed the books._ "I'm sure it would be lovely, but." 

Aziraphale expected Crowley to push back the way he would have done thirty years ago. He expected at least a token counteroffer. _Just one drink wouldn’t hurt?_ Or perhaps a more direct approach. _It doesn’t have to mean anything._

Instead, Crowley said, “of course,” easy as anything, pushing his hands into his pockets. The tension had gone out of his shoulders. His voice was disappointed but not surprised. "Another time then." 

Aziraphale felt as though he had missed a step going down the stairs. "Yes,” he managed, “another time,” and made his way back to his car. 

The insects chirped and jumped in the grass along the path, stirred to a frenzy as he passed. He turned around to look back only once, as he fumbled for the car keys in his pocket. The golden evening light silhouetted Crowley against the doorframe. He waved, a jaunty little gesture, then was gone inside the house, screen door clapping behind him. 

Aziraphale started his car and drove slowly down the driveway, wondering what it would have been like to go through with it. They would have been frantic, he thought, tearing at each other's clothes, but then at a certain point—and it was dangerous, very dangerous, that Aziraphale didn't quite know at _what_ point—Aziraphale would have needed to stop the motion of Crowley's hands, would have reached to re-button his own shirt would have said—what exactly? _Before we go further, I have to tell you…_

The imagined words stuck in Aziraphale's throat, made it hard to breathe even in the warm, safe confines of his car. 

_I'm sorry I can't...it's not like when we were teenagers._

And Crowley would say, _why not?_ In that soft, persuasive way of his, and his hands would wander again towards Aziraphale's buttons and Aziraphale might not have the strength to stop them a second time—

Aziraphale shuddered. 

_I can't hurt you again_ , he thought about saying, thought about Crowley's brow furrowing in confusion between the dark pools of his sunglasses. 

_Again?_ Crowley would say. _Is this about how you didn't visit me in the hospital? Or before that, when you said it was over? Or is it there something else you haven’t told me, is it about that day in August, my very last shift when it all went wrong—_

Aziraphale was shaking by the time he parked at the bookshop, mind churning with the sound of helicopter blades and sirens rising through the valley, echoing off the mountains. He rushed up the steps, reached for his keys, dropped them with fumbling hands. He bent to retrieve them and when he looked up he was face-to-face with a stranger. 

A woman was standing on the porch. Aziraphale had been so wrapped up in his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed her at first. Long dark skirt. Long dark hair. Wire rimmed glasses. She looked the way someone might imagine an Appalachian woman to look, if their only references were album covers for new age folk artists and their only clothes were sourced from high end boutiques in Brooklyn. The glasses were designer. The skirt was almost certainly couture. _Tourist?_ Aziraphale wondered looking her up and down, and then with dawning horror: _customer?_

The woman pointed to the faded sign stuck to the bookshop’s glass door. "Aren't you supposed to be open today?" 

"Ah, well," Aziraphale stalled, flustered. "Well you see, we're closed for repairs, rather a bad time to visit now." 

"What a shame," the woman said, "I was hoping to peek around a bit." 

"Sorry," Aziraphale wrenched the door open at last, doing his best to gather his frayed nerves, and trying to stand firm. "We are closed I'm afraid." 

He wanted nothing more than to disappear inside, run a bath perhaps with a few drops of calming lavender oil, put on some Shostakovich, who always seemed to strike just the right melancholy mood, and drift in the hot water until it grew tepid around him. 

Instead of taking a hint, the woman stuck out her hand. "Anathema Device," she said, "reporter for the _New York Times_." 

Aziraphale took it. Her hand was cool, her grip firm. "Aziraphale Wright. I hope it's not terribly rude of me to ask, but what's a reporter with the _New York Times_ doing in Eden?" 

She gave him a practiced, businesslike smile. "Hoping to talk to you actually." 

Aziraphale froze in the intensity of her spectacled stare, then sighed and caved, fantasies of a nice long soak vanishing under the force of deeply ingrained politeness. "I haven’t the faintest why you’d want to. But I think you'd better come inside." 

***

"Wow," Anathema said, looking around wide eyed. "Even after hearing about it, I almost didn’t believe this place actually existed. And in this town no less. No offence Mr. Wright." 

"I understand it's unusual." 

"One of a kind, just like Agnes it seems," Anathema turned, long skirts swirling dramatically through the dust on the floor. "I wrote her obituary. That's why I'm here." 

"Surely the obituary ran weeks ago.”Aziraphale said pointedly. 

“Oh it did,” Anathema flashed him a wickedly sharp grin and went back to perusing the shelves. Aziraphale grit his teeth and tried to muster the shreds of his patience. 

Anathema’s voice floated up from somewhere between LOCAL HISTORY and WITCHCRAFT & SUNDRY SPELLCASTING. “When I was writing the obituary, I was intrigued by some of the stories I learned. Eden is a very interesting place.” 

“Is it?” Aziraphale asked faintly. 

Anathema reemerged next to the register. “I got approval from my editors to do a feature length piece on coal mining in Eden County. It’s a story that can’t be told without Wright Mining Corporation of course. And then, when I heard that you had inherited this place, well, I knew I wanted _desperately_ to talk with you. Can I buy this?” 

Aziraphale blinked at the sudden change of subject. Anathema was holding up a dusty book titled _West Virginia Coal Towns Through the Ages_. Aziraphale doubted anyone had touched it in twenty years or more, but still, seeing one of Agnes’ books, one of _his_ books in a stranger’s hands, someone _from the outside_ who dressed in folk couture and called Eden “interesting,” scare quotes implied if not outright stated, was a bridge too far. 

“It’s not for sale,” he snapped and snatched it from her hands. 

“Pity,” Anathema pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve to dust off her fingertips. “Could have been useful for research. It would be more useful, though, to ask you a few questions.” 

“I haven’t lived here for thirty years. I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you would want to talk to me about. If you need to know anything about Wright Mines, my brother Gabriel—” 

“You were an intern at Wright Mines in the summer of ‘85, weren’t you?” Anathema cut in. “The summer there was that horrible accident?” 

Azirahale’s heartbeat flared up in a thumping roar. He turned the signet ring over and over on his pinky finger, tried to school his face into something approaching neutral. 

“I was,” he said. “Although I don’t know how you knew. I don’t work in coal anymore, haven’t for years. I’m afraid I don’t have much to say about the accident.” He paused, allowed a blatant lie to fill his mouth like bile. “I don’t even really think about it anymore.” 

“I just checked the local paper,” Anathema said. “They’ve all been digitized. It’s all online. Your picture’s right there, with your brother. The caption says you were an intern. I was curious, that’s all, what someone who interned for Wright Mines, a member of the Wright family, is doing running Agnes’ shop. And I was curious if you might have anything to say about that summer.” 

Aziraphale’s lips felt numb. “I don’t.” 

Anathema regarded him through her round glasses. It occurred to him belatedly that he might have underestimated her. “If you change your mind, here’s my card.” She placed it on the register, tapped it with one long black painted nail. 

“I’ll let you get back to your—” Anathema looked around the shop. It seemed especially gloomy now in the half-light of the evening, with none of the electric lights on and dust all over the shelves. “— repairs,” she finished and was out the door with a sweep of her long skirt. Aziraphale locked it behind her with shaking hands, then went upstairs, not to draw a bath but to boot up his ancient laptop. 

A few clicks was all it took. The Eden County Historical Society had all the old newspapers online, searchable by year. Aziraphale waited for the pdf of the front page to load with bated breath. Then there he was, in stark black and white, thirty years younger, walking half a step behind Gabriel and the state regulator; his shirt pressed, crisp and neat against the ash grey backdrop of rubble. Aziraphale’s younger self stared back at him above the caption: “Gabriel Wright, president of Wright Mining Corporation and Aziraphale Wright, intern, survey damage with help from state officials.” 

Aziraphale shut the computer with a snap. 

It was well and truly dark now, but the liquor store was probably still open. Aziraphale could walk down the street and be back in twenty minutes with a bottle of wine. Maybe two. He could drink until he fell asleep. It had been a while, but he still remembered how. Perhaps then the dreams would stop. But did he want them to? 

Unbidden, the memory of hands tangling underwater surfaced in Aziraphale’s mind. Would he dream of that touch tonight? Of the naked joy on Crowley’s face? Of what might have happened if Aziraphale had said yes to tea, and then yes to more and yes and yes until— 

The phone rang. _Repairs_. Aziraphale dived for it, fumbled, answered on the second ring. 

“Hey.” Crowley’s voice was warm in his ear. Aziraphale’s hands and fingers tingled, a drop in barometric pressure, a surge of happiness, the lingering side effect of a particularly strong medication he had taken twenty years ago. 

“Hello,” Aziraphale said, breathless. 

“I had a really good time,” Crowley said. “Today.” 

“So did I.” 

Crowley cleared his throat. “Look, I was going to tell you, I know a guy in Marietta, just over the border from Parkersburg, who works with wrought iron. I mentioned to him about the stairs in your shop, he said he could help you replace the rusted ones if you like. If you send him some pictures and the dimensions, he can have a sample ready to pick up by early next week.” 

“Oh.” This was good news, why was Aziraphale disappointed? 

“I was thinking,” Crowley continued, something careful in his voice that made Aziraphale’s heart pulse in his throat. “Things aren’t too busy on the farm right now. If you wanted, we could drive up there together next week. There’s this cafe up near Parkersburg, a farm to table type deal, the kind of place I usually avoid ‘cause it’s touristy, but it’s actually really good food. Good atmosphere too. Not a lot of….judgement. We could stop there on our way back, make a night out of it, what do you think?” 

"Yes," Aziraphale found himself saying, choking on something like grief, like terror, like elation. "Yes, I'd like that very much."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never intended to leave more than a month between updates of this story, but it has been a very busy past few weeks for me outside of fandom. I’m planning to resume regular every other week updates now that I’ve got my life a bit more under control. I am so excited to tell this story and share it with the world, and the long wait to get this chapter out was so frustrating. Thank you for your patience! 
> 
> Also, it is entirely possible (although obviously quite challenging) to build a working airplane in your garage or barn, as I discovered while watching countless time lapse videos on youtube. They are honestly quite charming and satisfying to watch! 
> 
> While writing this chapter I obsessively listened to [ this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZI1mtbbQXs), and [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmYAxCLk3K4), and of course [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wxI4KK9ZYo) (practically an official soundtrack for these two).


	8. The Company You Keep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for the beta read and for putting up with all my neurotic DMs about this story! 
> 
> We are back on a regular update schedule! Yay!! [Please imagine the hellmo/gritty/flappy taco emoji of your choice here.] Updates will be every other weekend for the rest of the fall, but will increase in frequency to once a week over the winter, once some of my IRL obligations wrap up. Any changes to the update schedule will be posted on tumblr. 
> 
> CW: This chapter contains a scene which involves threat of violence towards a queer person and a short but intense transphobic exchange of dialogue. The scene is bracketed off by +++ marks to make you aware if you'd like to skip it, and the content of the scene is described in the end notes if you'd like to read about it ahead of time and decide. I thought long and hard about including this scene (it was one of the first ones I wrote and I've been sitting with it for more than half a year). In the end, I decided it was heavy but important to the story, and I did my best to make it only as painful as the story requires. 
> 
> Additionally, there is a brief reference to unhealthy use of alcohol, which is in the main body of the story and not the bracketed off section.

In sleep, borders shifted, reformed, dissolved. Aziraphale was fucking Crowley, long deep thrusts that juddered the bedposts against the wall, then Aziraphlale twisted his spine to kiss him, sweat dripping down the bridge of his nose in the humid night and the dream changed. Aziraphale was being fucked, Crowley rattling the headboard above him. They were together on the bed as one creature, and Aziraphale was also floating, aware in that distant, detached way of dreaming, of the vastness of space around them. 

Geography shifted. Time expanded. The mountains of West Virginia ebbed out into the plains of the midwest, the marshland of the Chesapeake. Everything flowed, somewhere in the grey part of the dawn between sleeping and waking. Aziraphale was fucking, he was being fucked, he was standing on the dock by Crowley’s pond and the odor of the mud rising through the air around him—earthy, warm, a little sulphurous—was the smell of the prehistoric marsh that once flourished here and died and was buried for a thousand thousand years until it came up out of the earth as coal.

Their fingers were twined together on the mattress, and then Aziraphale’s body itself was dissolving, flowing like water into Crowley’s through their interlaced fingers, through the place where they were joined below. Azirahphale didn’t know where Crowley ended or where he began. They moved together like an ocean, like an ancient shallow sea. Aziraphale was Crowley. Crowley was Aziraphale. And then Aziraphale was dropping into a pit in the earth at the same time as he watched, from far above, the clanging doors of the cage slamming shut.

Aziraphale jerked awake. The fan above Agnes’ bed spun slowly like a hovering helicopter. Cool air, wet with the dew, drifted in the open window. Aziraphale glanced at the bedside clock. 5:30 am. Crowley was coming to pick him up in just a few hours. They were going to Ohio. 

***

Two hours away from Eden by car, the Ohio River cuts wide and lazy through the land, bisects the map in a wandering state line. An old-fashioned lime green pickup traveling several miles over the speed limit followed the curve of the river, skirting the edge of Parkersburg, West Virginia, heading towards the bridge. 

Crowley’s hands were relaxed on the wheel. His hair, freed from it’s usual bun, blew away from his face in the rushing wind from the open window. Glancing over from the passenger seat, Aziraphale was once again struck by how happy Crowley looked, how carefree and at peace.

Crowley had arrived at the bookshop in the late morning, held the door of the truck open like some gallant knight welcoming a lady into his castle and Aziraphale, God help him, hadn’t minded at all. He’d been giddy with it actually; the attention, the care, the way Crowley’s head tilted as Aziraphale was getting into the truck to not so subtly suggest that behind the sunglasses, he was looking at Aziraphale’s rear. That giddiness stayed with him the entire drive, a restless sort of happiness that was so foreign he didn’t quite know what to do with it. The radio hissed nonsense static and they talked lightly about things of no real importance—the weather (a worryingly warm winter, bad for the apple trees), the changing fortunes of the Eden Angels swim team (a few good years until the YMCA pool got torn down by the health inspector), Aziraphale’s revolving door of hobbies (knitting was out, crocheting was in, and also, maybe cooking if he could get his hands on some easy recipes). It was a glorious afternoon. The highway stretched in front of them, the wheels of the truck hummed on the blacktop, the sky was blue before them, dotted only with a few picture-perfect fluffy clouds. 

Crowey had brought snacks. As Aziraphale sorted through the Walmart bag on the way out of town he realized with a pang that they were all of his old favorites from high school—salt and vinegar chips, pretzel sticks, Hershey’s special dark chocolates. Crowley hadn’t bought anything for himself. 

“Would you like any?” Aziraphale had asked, early in the drive, holding out the bag of chips. 

“Nah,” Crowley waved a hand, nails a deep maroon, the same color as his mouth. “I ate already, I don’t want to smudge my lipstick.” 

Aziraphale had noticed, of course, that Crowley was wearing makeup. The sharp angles of his face, striking to begin with, were positively ethereal beneath the light dusting of blush on his cheekbones, the perfectly applied curve of pigment on his mouth. Aziraphale had noticed and hadn’t said anything. What could he have said? _You look beautiful_ came to mind, and was shoved away immediately as inappropriate, the kind of thing that could give Crowley absolutely the wrong idea. It was true though. Crowley was in the same tight black jeans and boots he always wore, but his top was something dark, flowing, and feminine, with a low cut back that revealed the graceful arch of his shoulder blades, minimal sleeves beneath which just a hint of his red underarm hair was visible. It was possible, in fact, that Aziraphale had spent just a moment longer than was strictly necessary sweeping his eyes up and down Crowley’s body before getting into the truck, possible that he had paused just a second on the step up into the cab to allow Crowley the opportunity to do the same. 

Dressing in a woman’s blouse and putting on makeup to drive halfway across the state for what amounted to a business meeting was foolish. Aziraphale himself was no fool; he had forgone his usual vest and bowtie in favor of neutral slacks and a plain white polo shirt. And yet the recklessness of it all, Crowley’s supreme unconcern with what the world might think of him, sparked in Aziraphale’s chest like arousal, tasted in his mouth like jealousy. 

“I like the color,” Aziraphale ventured with sudden daring as they were leaving Eden. “It suits you.” He darted his eyes over to the drivers’ seat, was assailed again with the image of those deep red lips and a sudden thought; Crowley writhing beneath him as he had been in the dream, Aziraphale bending to ruin the clean lines of that mouth with his own. 

They were quiet as the truck sped around Parkersburg, the kind of companionable silence only possible between old friends. This relaxed quiet between them was more than Aziraphale had ever expected, far more than he had ever deserved. He was grateful for just this, for being able to sit side by side in the cab of a truck for hours, no longer counting down time until Aziraphale’s curfew, until Crowley’s next shift at the mine, afraid of being caught out something forbidden. As the truck passed beneath the rust colored girders of the bridge, over the swirling muddy water, and into the Buckeye State, the Birthplace of Aviation, The Heart of it All, Ohio, Aziraphale was once again thinking about borders. 

(The end of summer, the driveway of his father’s house. The house was gone now, torn down fifteen years ago this September to make room for the new highway bypassing Eden, but Aziraphale remembered that afternoon anyway with the detached crystalline shine of something preserved behind glass in a museum. 

Aziraphale had rubbed at his sunburnt nose and waved goodbye and then gotten in his truck. He hadn’t looked back, not for miles and miles, not until he was descending the steep slope into Cumberland, Maryland. Only then did he glance in the rear view mirror, watch as the blue and yellow “Welcome to West Virginia” sign faded away into the distance.

As the sign disappeared, Aziraphale had felt, for the very first time in his eighteen years of existence, a great lightness take hold of him, as though a weight had fallen away, as though he was capable of rising into the air.

Crowley’s bags, like Aziraphale’s, had been packed all summer. But, on that glorious afternoon when Aziraphale sped across the border from West Virginia into Maryland, Crowley hadn’t been on the plane to Colorado with the other new cadets. He had been under anesthesia, undergoing an operation to knit back together the bones of his face, to remove what was left of his eye.) 

They had crossed the river into Ohio. Crowley took the exit for Marietta, slid his sunglasses down his nose, to turn his good eye on Aziraphale, a secret sort of sideways glance. Aziraphale, feeling the lightness of leaving West Virginia unfurl behind them like a set of wings, returned it. And he understood that this, too, was the crossing of a border. 

***

Crowley pulled into an unpaved parking lot in a cloud of dust. The words DOWLING FOUNDRY AND CUSTOM FABRICATION were stenciled on the side of a large warehouse in massive red, white and blue lettering. Tattered bunting in the same three colors hung haphazard, strung from the roof of the warehouse to poles planted off-kilter in the brown, wilted grass. It was hot, very hot. Crowley’s snakeskin boots kicked up a puff of dust as he swung his legs out of the truck. 

“A bit early to decorate for the 4th of July,” Aziraphale observed, following Crowley to a door set in the side of the warehouse. 

Crowley snorted. “According to Thad, it’s never too early to celebrate the 4th of July. He’s big on patriotism.” He pulled open the door of the office, held it open for Aziraphale to pass through. 

_Big on patriotism might be an understatement_ , Aziraphale thought as his eyes adjusted from the bright sunlight, and then struggled with the far greater task of adjusting to the decor. Nearly every wall was covered in Americana. The piece de resistance was a window frame, tacked up on the far wall over a pixelated poster of the grand canyon, a real wrought iron balcony bolted to the front of it. A stuffed eagle perched on the balcony. Wrought iron balustrades and window boxes and steps were scattered all over the floor of the room in no particular order. Everything on the walls was just slightly off center, which, combined with the curling forest of metal that sprouted from the floor, gave the office an oddly whimsical appearance. It was the kind of room that Aziraphale, if he was being generous, might have described as _eccentric_ , or, if he was feeling less charitable, _deranged_. 

“Oh my,” Aziraphale said faintly. 

Crowley let the door swing shut behind him with a thump, causing the already crooked _Constitution and Bill of Rights_ on the wall to list further. 

“I agree it’s tacky. But Thad does quality work and he’ll give you a good price. His kid was the worst pilot I ever met until I taught him how to fly without killing himself. Thad seriously owes me.” 

“You….what?” Aziraphale asked, still overwhelmed by the decor. 

“When I was still in the air club in Morgantown I taught flight school one day a week to help offset the costs of flying.” Crowley shrugged. “A lot of people do it. But most people aren’t cursed to teach a sixteen year-old who’s petrified of heights and saddled with a pig-headed father who will spare no expense to see his son _man up_. When his son finally passed his checkride, Thad Dowling shook my hand and told me if I needed any favors, all I had to do is ask.” 

“And you’re cashing in your favor...for me?” Aziraphale asked. 

Crowely shrugged, tried to put his hands in his pockets, realized his shirt was in the way, and settled for making an unintelligible series of noises. 

Aziraphale, feeling deeply awkward himself, opened his mouth without knowing what he was going to say, when the door to the warehouse swung open and the force of nature called Thad Dowling barreled in.

***

“You know I do some fishing myself,” Thad was saying. “You ever been up to see the Salmon run near Lake Erie? You could practically put your hand in the water, grab one right out, no fishing rod, nothing, just your bare goddamn hand. Here, just put your John Hancock on that line right there—” 

“I’m rather new to fishing actually,” Aziraphale said, signing. “Thank you for that tip. And thank you for such a generous discount. I don’t know if I could have afforded to replace the whole staircase without it.” 

“Anything for Anthony,” Thad said, looking Crowley up and down with a slow, weighted sort of gaze that made the hairs on the back of Aziraphale’s neck stand up. 

Thad’s personality was certainly abrasive, but he was an attractive man. He was nearly half a head taller than Aziraphale himself, broad shouldered, clearly the kind of man who still worked out, unlike Aziraphale, who shuddered these days at the prospect of lifting a heavy box of books let alone setting foot in a gym. Aziraphale supposed it would not be an extraordinary leap to imagine that Crowley might have—

He tried to cut the thought off there, but it continued to unspool like an old-fashioned film reel inside his head. Perhaps Crowely’s makeup had been for Mr. Dowling? Perhaps what Aziraphale had considered reckless was in fact a calculated gesture? Mr. Dowling certainly seemed to appreciate it. His brown eyes lingered on Crowley’s red lips. 

Crowley shifted imperceptibly nearer to Aziraphale. “We appreciate it Mr. Dowling.” 

Thad’s eyes flicked from Crowley’s lips to Aziraphale, and something like understanding filtered into them, chased quickly by disappointment. 

“You know, I think there might actually be a typo in the contract,” Thad flicked through the pages quickly with thick fingers. “Gosh darn, but the price ought to be 20 percent higher than what I wrote. Let me draw you up a new one.” 

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale pushed his reading glasses up his nose. “I’m afraid I already signed this one. And so, it seems, have you.” 

“Ah but you see—” 

“Aren’t you a man of your word? Only, integrity is such an important factor in whom I choose to do business with...” Aziraphale said, allowing just a smidge of self-righteousness to creep into his voice. 

“Of course, of course.” Thad shuffled the papers with a poorly concealed grimace. “I’ll give you a call when it’s all ready and then you can arrange a time for the installation.” 

“Oh, that would be lovely.” Aziraphale beamed. “It’s been such a pleasure working with Dowling Foundry and Fabrication.” 

They stood to shake hands and say their goodbyes. Thad pressed Aziraphale’s palm almost painfully, crushing his fingers in a vice like grip. Aziraphale felt Thad’s eyes follow them as they left, resisted the urge to put a hand on the small of Crowley’s back as they crossed the dusty lot back to the truck. 

“You are such a bastard,” Crowley muttered when they were out of earshot. 

“I’m not,” Aziraphale protested. “I’m just a stickler for the rules that’s all, and he _had_ already signed the contract.” 

“Bastard,” Crowley said, unrepentant, grinning, as he swung his long legs into the truck. 

The evening light slanted down over the iron girders of the bridge as they recrossed back into West Virginia, the Ohio River flowing below them like molten gold. Even now that they were back, the lightness of being away still clung to Aziraphale, gave him the courage to ask a question he otherwise wouldn’t have voiced aloud. 

"Crowley, I'm sorry if this is delicate, but you and Mr. Dowling, did he...were you and him…"

"No," Crowley said, and something vicious and rabid that Aziraphale had been trying to ignore all afternoon eased back down his throat. 

"No," Crowley said again, taking a curve in the road fifteen miles over the speed limit. "He wanted to, but he’s got a wife and of course, I know his kid personally. I don’t go in for that sort of thing."

"Go in for what sort of thing," Aziraphale said, feeling suddenly breathless. It must be the pressure of the seat belt against his sternum, the force of gravity, the bend in the road.

"Being someone else's secret," Crowley said, matter of fact, steering into the curve. 

(A flash of memory, Crowley's eyes glinting in the dark humid August night, his hand sliding down Aziraphale's front to tangle in his belt. _No one has to know_.)

"I don't do that," Crowley murmured. "Not anymore." 

The evening sun fell on Crowley’s face, lipstick and rouge faded now after a full day of wear. He hadn't worn it for Thad, Aziraphale was sure. He twisted the ring on his finger, then thought with a surge of fear and joy, _he's wearing it for me_. 

***

They parked outside a low building a few minutes off the highway. “This is the place,” Crowley said. He made no move to get out of the car. Well dressed men and women were filtering in and out in the warm glow of string lights hung up by the entrance. 

“Oh good, I’m quite looking forward to dinner,” Aziraphale unbuckled his belt, put a hand on the door. 

“Wait.” Crowley’s voice was hoarse. Aziraphale’s heart leapt into his throat. _Please don’t ask. Please don’t ask what we’re doing here, together, like this. I’m not ready yet. I don’t know._

Crowley reached trembling fingers up to his glasses, his lips curled into a wry, self-deprecating twist. “Look, it’s ridiculous, but I just—is it alright if I keep these on? For dinner?” 

Aziraphale blinked at him. The surge of adrenaline subsided like a wave washing back out to sea. In its wake, Aziraphale felt drained, and then, the creeping tide of relief. The possibility hadn’t even crossed his mind that Crowley might _want_ to take the sunglasses off for dinner. _I’m not ready yet for that either_ , Aziraphale thought. “Of course,” he said aloud, trying not to let the relief creep into his voice. “Of course it’s alright to leave them on.” 

Shoulder to shoulder, they walked inside. Aziraphale looked around at the building and decor, eyes wide, as they were shown to a table by a waitress with blue hair. 

“You didn’t tell me this place used to be a mechanic’s garage.” 

“Oh, didn’t I?” Crowley settled himself across from Aziraphale. The waitress reached between them to light a candle. “That was partially why I wanted to bring you here.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Well,” Crowley drew the word out, looked suddenly uncertain. “I thought this would be interesting for you, I mean, this is what you do, isn’t it? Repurpose old buildings? Salvage? Give old broken down things a new life?” 

“More or less, yes.” 

“I just...I guess I just wanted to show you you could do that in West Virginia too,” Crowley said. “If you wanted.” 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, and it hung between them over the low murmur of the other diners, just that syllable, like the long sustained note of a soprano solo. And then, Aziraphale surprised himself by saying, “thank you.” 

Dinner was excellent, just as Crowley had promised. Good food and better conversation; light, meaningless talk as it had been in the car, but this time with a sort of thrumming undercurrent beneath it, the echo of Aziraphale’s _thank you_ that hadn’t quite faded into the ambient air of the room. 

“Do you want dessert?” Crowley asked when the plates had been cleared away. 

In the soft candlelight that made him look twenty years younger, with the sunglasses, and the fashionable drape of his top, and the deep red lipstick, leaning carelessly back in his chair, Crowley looked glamorous, like a rock star or an actor—someone Aziraphale never in a thousand years would have imagined to belong here, in the middle of nowhere. Someone Aziraphale never in a thousand years—in six thousand years even—would have thought he had a chance with. Aziraphale's eyes were drawn again, as they had been in the pole barn, to the pulse point that jumped in Crowley's throat. He thought about putting his mouth there, biting gently into the soft flesh, burying his nose in the graying strands of hair at the nape of Crowley's neck. In another world, a younger, more reckless version of Aziraphale was pushing his chair back from the table, leaning over Crowley to whisper into his mouth, "let's skip dessert," or something even more cheesy, "you _are_ the dessert." 

In this world, Aziraphale's hungry mouth had to contend with nothing more than the press of his own fingers through rough cloth as he dabbed at his lips with the napkin, had to be satisfied with only the taste of the meal which had, after all, been exquisite. 

He realized Crowley was still staring at him. He hadn't answered the question. 

"I know you have a sweet tooth," Crowley said, smile teasing. "It's alright. I don’t mind if you indulge a bit. They have a good chocolate cake here. M' not much for sweets myself but I've had it once and liked it. And of course professionally I have to recommend the apple pie, shame it’s not in season." 

Crowley was watching him intently. "Or," he said, dropping his voice, smile sliding into something seductive and earnest, "we could go back to Eden. I've got half a tray of fresh blueberry crumble if you'd like?" 

He cocked his head at Aziraphale. His cheeks were flushed, not only, Aziraphale was sure, from the blush he had applied. Once again, the invitation was unmistakable. In the warm candlelight, at the worn, cozy table, after such a lovely meal, Aziraphale couldn't quite remember all the reasons why the answer ought to be _no_. 

"That would be wonderful, darling," he said. Crowley inhaled audibly either at the endearment or the tone, the insinuation of _want_ , of sweaty bodies twining together in the dark, lips meeting and opening, skin on skin, that Aziraphale couldn't keep out of his voice any longer. 

"We’ll get the check then," Crowley said, decisive, leaning back in his chair so his long legs brushed Aziraphale's under the table. 

***

"My dear you really didn't have to—" 

"Nonsense." 

"It's hardly fair, you drove me all the way out here, did the favor of putting me in touch with your man—" 

"—not my man—"

"—found the place for dinner. The least I could have done was cover the check." 

Crowley made another of those unintelligible noises. It was fully dark on the road and Crowley's sunglasses sat on the dashboard rather than on his face. In profile, seen from the passenger seat, his ruined eye was out of sight. The other was golden and expressive. 

Aziraphale had a sudden vision of what it must have looked like to their waiter back at the restaurant, Crowley smoothly taking the billfold, sliding it back with cash from his wallet, helping Aziraphale to his feet after dinner, steering him out of the restaurant with one hand hovering over but not quite touching the small of Aziraphale’s back, the inverse of the gesture Aziraphale had considered and rejected at the Dowling Foundry. Aziraphale had known what it had looked like, and he had let Crowley do it anyway. He had _wanted_ it anyway. 

"I didn’t mind paying,” Crowley said softly. “I like taking care of things for you.” 

Aziraphale was silent because what could he say to _that_? But even as he sat in the darkness, the warm summer air rushing past the opened windows, bright headlights cutting through the gloom ahead, he thought of a freezing cold church on the hillside, Crowley leaning over to say, _let me fix that calculation_. Crowley's hand on his when he’d broken his pinky during football practice, _here let me_ —wrapping tape to secure the broken finger to the one next to it. Later, in the springtime, with the scent of thawing earth all around them, Crowley on his knees—his jeans would bear twin patches of mud in school the next day, Aziraphale would look at them and _know_ —Crowley murmuring _let me_ , bending his head under Aziraphale’s trembling fingertips as if in prayer. 

_I like taking care of things for you_. It had been cleverly said, Aziraphale thought, just two words off from what Crowley really meant, but wouldn’t voice aloud. _I like taking care of you._

_I like it when you do_ , Aziraphale wanted to say. But, of course, they weren’t teenagers anymore. There were so many ways, now, that Crowley couldn't possibly take care of Aziraphale. It would be more than buddy taping a finger. Much more. Aziraphale couldn’t—wouldn’t—ask that of anyone. And besides, Aziraphale hadn't held up his end of the bargain, had he? He hadn't taken care of Crowley. Not when it mattered.

Crowley cleared his throat. “I’ve got about a quarter tank. Gonna get off at the next exit, stop for gas.” 

“Of course.” 

Off the highway, the forest rose all around them, pressed dense and dark over the two lane road. They drove for a while in silence but for the hissing radio static until they turned a close corner and the bright light of a gas station spilled onto the road ahead. Crowley pulled in next to a pump. 

No one else was here. The convenience store attached to the station was closed, but the pumps were still lit up. Crowley killed the engine and stepped out into the warm night. The summer evening mist had rolled into the hollow where they were parked. It was everywhere, like smoke under the bright fluorescent lights, rising in the woods around them. It made Aziraphale’s hair stand up, sticky with moisture, reminiscent of summer evenings long ago, a childhood he had thought long gone, banished to the very back of his conscious mind. He glanced in the side view mirror to watch Crowley fiddle with his credit card at the machine, take the nozzle off the hook. He was an unearthly creature under the lights. Hands pale and delicate, red fingernails on the black plastic pump handle. 

Illuminated in the white floodlights of the gas station, with the warm, fragrant darkness of the woods wrapped like a cocoon all around, Aziraphale felt suspended, cast back into this morning’s dream state, sure that the borders of the world had changed. Space constricted until only their little bubble of bright light remained. Everything outside it was fuzzy, indistinct, like the white noise of the insects in the trees. Everything inside it was sharp, crystal clear. The light illuminated the red hairs on Crowley’s head. Aziraphale thought he could have counted every one. Moths beat fruitlessly against the floodlights, sizzled and died on the flashing neon lettering of the convenience store sign. The faint, insignificant flutter of their wings seemed a great distance away. He and Crowley were utterly alone in their small pocket of the world. 

Time expanded. High school could have been yesterday, it could have been a thousand years ago. The humid mist that curled through the air was the last remnant of a flourishing shallow sea. The blood of ancient creatures that lived, died, and decomposed aeons ago ran, in some form or another, through the pump in Crowley's grasp, and also through the blue veins that stood out on the backs of his slender hands, and through Aziraphale's veins, and through the living, breathing body of every child of the mountains. Crowley's hair cascaded over his shoulders, his shirt cascaded over his narrow hips. He was both impossibly near and terribly far away. Borders shifted, reformed, dissolved. Aziraphale reached one hand through the open window and traced the exposed arch of Crowley's shoulder blades on the glass of the side view mirror. Crowley shivered and drew them together as though in response. 

Before, in the restaurant, Aziraphale had imagined them tangled up together in Crowley’s bed or his own, an indistinct idea of sex and sweat. But now, in the harsh gas station lights, Aziraphale understood with a rush of clarity, the cresting wave of a prehistoric sea, that sex was not all, or even most, of what he wanted from Crowley. Whatever he felt in Crowley’s presence was beyond desire, beyond, even language itself. There were no words to describe it, so, just as Joe Wright had done more than a hundred years earlier, Aziraphale reached for the closest word he knew. What he felt with Crowley was peace. 

And then, out of the mist, with a roar of a diesel engine as loud as a collapsing mineshaft, like the return of a bad dream, came trouble. 

+++

The truck had jacked up mud tires; two sets of headlights, both blinding in their intensity. It circled around Crowley’s truck, and while it did, Crowley took his hands off the pump, grabbed a fistful of paper towels from the courtesy station, held them to his face. Aziraphale did not understand and then he did: Crowley was trying to wipe off his makeup. 

The truck completed its wide arc and pulled up at the pump directly behind them, the rough noise of its idle drowning out the insects in the trees. Crowley’s bare arms were silhouetted against the four-eyed shine of the headlights. His hand was back on the pump. He was looking intently at the screen, watching the numbers tick upwards, filling the tank. 

The headlights of the other truck cut out, the noise of the engine died in the now-stifling humid air. Aziraphale pulled at his buttoned up collar, twisted the ring on his finger. 

A man got out of the truck, a large hulking mountain of a man, in heavy work boots and jeans with a plaid flannel shirt unbuttoned over a blindingly white undershirt. A baseball cap cast a long shadow over his face, entirely obscuring his features. The brim of the cap tilted up slightly; he was glancing towards Crowley. Crowley did not look back. He was still staring at the numbers on the pump, standing with an exaggerated sort of stillness that reminded Aziraphale of a deer in a hunter’s scope. 

Then the other man turned away. He took his wallet out of his back pocket, paid, and started to pump his diesel. Aziraphale sagged back against the worn upholstery and let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. But the moment was not over. The brim of the man’s hat tilted again. He was talking to someone inside the truck, too quiet for Aziraphale to hear, and then he was turning, walking purposefully across the white concrete to Crowely, shadow stretched out long and monstrous in front of him. Crowley turned to face him, back to Aziraphale, one hand still on the gas pump, other hand on his hip, narrow chest open. _Vulnerable._

The man said something to Crowley, low and indistinct, and then several things happened at once: Crowley reared back, hand coming off the pump, forming a fist by his side, a serpent ready to strike. The man stepped forward, and his face tilted up; the shadow cast by the brim of his baseball cap shifted away and Aziraphale— Aziraphale _knew_ him. 

"Sandy," Aziraphale called, clambering out of the truck, heart in his throat, pulse in his ears, blood beating with the rush of the cicadas in the trees. "Sandy, is that you?" 

Crowley and the other man turned as one and Aziraphale could see that he had been right just as clearly as he could see the tension stretch, break, reform into recognition. The hulking man brushed past Crowley, who sagged back against the side of the truck as soon as he was out of eyesight. The man walked forward, clasped Aziraphale’s hand in one bear-like paw of his own. 

"Aziraphale! My brother told me you were back in town!” 

“Passing through, yes.” Aziraphale forced a smile to his face. “I’ve been here about a month now.” 

“I was just asking your friend here a question,” Sandy said, gesturing back towards where Crowley stood without looking at him. “Had no idea I was going to run into you.” 

“Oh, he’s not my friend.” Aziraphale said quickly, pulling at his collar. “I hired him to help with some renovations on Agnes’ old shop. You remember the one? In downtown Eden?” 

“Oh yeah, that old musty place. Well, what are you doing all the way out here?” 

“We’re on our way back from consulting about some replacement ironwork in Ohio.” 

“Shoulda tole me you were in town, coulda had you over for dinner.” 

“Another time maybe.” 

There was a loud click as the pump shut off. Behind Sandy’s broad bulk, Crowley pulled the nozzle out of the gas tank, screwed on the cap, replaced the nozzle on its hook, all with jerky, deliberate movements. His face was towards Aziraphale, but his one good eye was downcast. The whorled scar and sinuous snake that stretched over the other looked especially gruesome in the cold fluorescent light. In the warm, humid air, Aziraphale shivered. 

“You still play ball at all?” 

Aziraphale blinked, refocused on Sandy. “Not much unfortunately. A few too many hits when I was younger, everything aches more these days.” 

The click of the second pump shutting off sounded quietly in the distance. _Go back to your truck_ , Aziraphale thought. _You’ve filled up now. Please go back to your truck._

“Me too, me too,” Sandy nodded, staying right where he was, heavy boots planted on the concrete, legs like tree trunks. “I don’t get out on the field much anymore but my oldest is shaping up to be the best running back in the whole damn school and he’s only in tenth grade. My youngest just started playin’ too. He’s a big kid, we’re trying him at defensive end, just like you.” Sandy jerked his thumb back towards where a pale face pressed its nose against the passenger seat window of his truck. “That’s my Joey. Didn’t expect to have another at my age, but turns out there’s still a few bullets in the chamber. If you know what I mean.” Sandy leered. “You got any kids of your own?” 

“No, afraid not,” Aziraphale said. “I went on to engineering school and then I was so busy I never quite managed to settle down or start a family.” 

“Christ, that’s all you Wrights,” Sandy said amiably, “ambitious and clever to a fault. Gabe’s doing alright for himself though, ain't he? Nice wife, great kids, beautiful house up in Morgantown.” 

“Quite,” Aziraphale nodded. 

“Well, I hate to run out on you, but speaking of wives, I told my ball and chain I’d bring the kid home from little league by nine.” 

“Oh, don’t let me keep you,” Aziraphale demurred. 

Sandy clapped him on the shoulder. “You still talk funny, don’t ya. Politest man I know. You’d sack a player twice your size, take him down with an absolutely crushing hit, and then next thing turn around and offer him a hand and an apology, kind as can be. What a character you are. Anyway, you oughta be careful driving around here.” Sandy leaned in and his voice dropped into a lower register. “Ought to be careful about the company you keep, too. Just a word of advice. Not everybody’s as friendly as me.” Out of the corner of his eye, Aziraphale saw rather than heard Crowley’s quick inhale, the sudden hitch of his shoulders. 

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said. “I’ll bear it in mind.” 

“Yeah, you do that. And look me up next time you’re in town.” 

“I will,” Aziraphale said, and then, mercifully, Sandy was leaving. He walked around the hood of Crowley’s truck, then back to his own to pull out the nozzle and replace it on the hook. Sandy squinted at the receipt on the pump for several seconds as Aziraphale stood and watched, barely breathing, and then, with a wave and a roar of his engine, he was gone into the night. 

The sounds of the woods in summer slowly filtered back—cicadas in the trees and spring peepers in the drainage ditch by the side of the road and the rustle of wind in the leaves. Aziraphale closed his eyes and breathed in the fresh mountain air. One breath, two. Then he got back in the truck and buckled his seatbelt. 

It took Aziraphale several long moments to realize that Crowley was not getting back into the truck. He unbuckled, opened the door and looked behind him. Crowley was crouched by the rear of the truck where he had been standing before, not quite sitting on the ground, but squatting, hunched in on himself, face in his hands. 

“Crowley—?” Aziraphale started. 

“A minute.” Crowley’s voice was hoarse, but steady from behind the spread cage of his fingers. “Just give me a minute.” Aziraphale watched him a second or two longer, then slid back into the seat, shut the passenger door. What did he remember of Sandy? Loud, a big drinker. Quick to anger but surprisingly loyal when it came down to it. Aziraphale didn’t hate Sandy, but he didn’t particularly like him either. He simply hadn’t thought of Sandy in years, not until he had run into his brother in the police station downtown.

After what felt like minutes, the driver’s side door opened. Crowley got back into the car, face pale and drawn. 

“Well, that was a bit of a surprise,” Aziraphale said, trying to lighten the mood, instantly ashamed of how bright and cheery his voice sounded, but unable to change his tact now that he had started. “I knew Sandy worked out here, but fancy running into him like that. It really is a small world isn’t it.” 

Crowley made a noise in the back of his throat that could have been assent, could have been displeasure. He still hadn’t started the car. They sat in silence.

“Should we get a move on?” Aziraphale suggested a bit desperately. “That blueberry crumble’s still waiting for us at your place.” 

“Not sure I’m hungry anymore actually,” Crowley muttered.

Aziraphale sighed, dropped the act. "What did he say to you? Before I called out to him?" 

Crowley’s lips pursed and he blew out a heavy breath. For the first time since Aziraphale had arrived back in Eden, it seemed to him that Crowley looked his age. The lines on his face were sharp in the harsh fluorescent light, grey hair shining at his temple and the nape of his neck. He was nearly fifty after all. They both were. "Doesn't matter," Crowley said eventually, reaching in the glove box for a cigarette. 

He started the engine. They drove away from the little gas station; its oasis of light on the dark country road, its lurking terror. 

Crowley put the cigarette in his mouth and lit it one handed, without asking Aziraphale if it was alright to smoke. The end flared in the darkness, a point of red light held balanced between Crowley’s fingers on the wheel. 

The road rushed ahead of them. All was silent but for the tires on the asphalt, the low hiss of the radio, the warm county wind whipping past the windows. Despite the rolled down windows, the smell of smoke was strong in the cab. It made Aziraphale crave a cigarette too, and he was on the verge of asking for one when Crowley broke the silence. 

"My kid was asking if you was a boy or a girl, so I came over here to check," Crowley said abruptly. "That's what he said." 

Aziraphale inhaled sharply. His pulse raced. A second hand hit of nicotine, Crowley’s presence next to him, Sandy’s words, heavy with a threatening kind of implication, _ought to be careful about the company you keep_. 

"Sandy he's…" Crowley's hands tightened on the wheel, white knuckled as Aziraphale struggled to explain, to say something, say anything, against the awful drop in his stomach, the sensation of free fall. "I'm sure he didn't mean…" 

"Aziraphale _don't_." 

"Once you know him he's really quite alright," Aziraphale continued even though he knew, he _knew_ he ought to have stopped. "Must have been some kind of misunderstanding—" 

"For Christ's sake Aziraphale," Crowley's voice cracked in the gloom. Aziraphale flinched. His hands were shaking. He folded them in his lap, twisted the ring around his pinky finger. 

"Is that why you said we weren’t friends?" Crowley asked, quiet and deadly, voice silky smooth once more. "Afraid of a _misunderstanding_ were you?" 

One twist of the ring. Another. Full rotation after full rotation. The earth around the sun. A gravitational force. It had been thirty such rotations since he and Crowley had last spoken. Thirty rotations and then Aziraphale had opened a door to find Crowley loitering in the bright afternoon like no time had passed at all. Thirty rotations, but nothing had changed. 

"I was trying to diffuse tension," Aziraphale said.

"Diffuse tension," Crowley repeated slowly as if chewing on the words. 

"Yes, well, no thanks to you." 

"What's that supposed to mean?" 

"Well, since you asked,” Aziraphale drew in a breath, regretted the words even as he spoke them. “If you didn't dress like that, no one would notice anything different about you, you wouldn't attract this kind of attention—"

"Right, that's it," Crowley snapped, suddenly loud again. Aziraphale jumped. "I’m definitely not hungry for desert. I'm dropping you at the shop and then I'm driving home." 

Aziraphale glanced over at Crowley's sharp profile, willing him to understand. It simply wasn’t _safe_. All Aziraphale wanted to do—all he had ever wanted to do—was to protect Crowley. Couldn’t Crowley see that? "I just meant—" 

A muscle jumped in Crowley's jaw. "I know what you meant, I don't want to hear it." 

Aziraphale closed his mouth. Crowley finished smoking the cigarette, stubbed it out into the car’s ashtray. They lapsed into an uncomfortable sort of silence, all the more horrible for the many pleasant silences they had shared earlier in the day, which lasted all the way until Crowley was pulling into the gravel drive of the bookshop. Aziraphale unbuckled his seatbelt, hands trembling. 

"It's easy for you, isn't it." Crowley said softly, before Aziraphale could open the door of the truck. "You blend in wherever. You can just sort of—turn it off whenever you want. You’ve always been able to." 

"I don't know what you're talking about," Aziraphale said stiffly, because he couldn’t say _why can’t you do it too?_

The hard line of Crowley's mouth grew even harder. "You do know what I’m talking about, but you _would_ say that, wouldn't you. Thirty years and you still can't say what you are."

Crowley's stony expression cracked into something approaching pity, which was somehow worse than the entire angry silence on the way back to the shop.

"It's fine for you maybe," he said, "but honestly that's no way to live at all." 

And then the truck was gone in a spray of gravel leaving Aziraphale stranded under the flickering porch light, wishing he had said something, anything, different. 

+++

Aziraphale drank the bottle of wine he had bought this morning from the liquor store. What else was he supposed to do? He had bought in a sort of half-formed, hopeful haze brought on by the lingering effects of his dream. The plan had been to share it with Crowley, either tonight, or on some other evening, to recreate that afternoon weeks ago, when Crowley complimented Aziraphale’s cooking and sat through two versions of _Les Miserables_ in concert and lingered while the rain fell outside. _Well_ , Aziraphale thought grimly, topping off the mason jar he was using as a glass. _No need to save it now_.

He had gotten mail while he was out for the day. Halfway through the bottle of wine, Aziraphale sat at the kitchen table and went through it. A few pieces of junk. A handwritten note from Anathema Device, the reporter who had stopped by the other day, apologizing for getting off on the wrong foot and leaving her number once again. A brightly colored invitation from Gabe to his annual 4th of July picnic, which Aziraphale had always skipped when he lived in DC but didn’t see how he could this year, now that he was so much closer. 

Aziraphale sighed and retreated to the bedroom, still clutching the bottle of wine. His phone buzzed and his heart leapt but it was only Gabriel, texting to see if he had gotten the invitation. Why would it be Crowley? What reason would he have to contact Aziraphale now? 

He took a deep swig straight from the bottle, having abandoned the mason jar back in the kitchen. Crowley would be right to never contact him again, Aziraphale thought. He saw now that he had behaved abominably. Crowley had been afraid and Aziraphale had denied him. Worse, Aziraphale had tried to make excuses for someone he himself was afraid of. Had tried to tell Crowley—what exactly? To put on an act for his own safety? To hide, the way Aziraphale hid, to buy new clothes from Walmart, to throw away his makeup, to live in fear? _That's no way to live at all._ Crowley had said, and he was right, that was the worst part. He was right. Aziraphale had tried living in fear for nearly five decades now and it hadn’t made him happy, and it hadn’t made him safe. 

The room spun. He sat abruptly on the bed. 

No, the fear wasn’t the worst part. The worst part, the absolute worst part of it all, was that even now, even when Aziraphale knew he had no hope whatsoever of Crowley wanting to be in the same room as him, let alone invite him to dessert, or whatever was implied by the euphemism, even now Aziraphale's mind couldn't stop gravitating to the red shine of Crowley's lips, the elegant motion of his hands. 

Since returning to Eden, Aziraphale had vowed that he wouldn’t do anything about his attraction to Crowley. He could acknowledge it to himself and move on. For the sake of their rekindled friendship, he would move on. But now, having had three fourths of a bottle of white wine, sunk in misery, replaying their interactions of the day, Aziraphale's inhibitions had loosened. What did it matter? Crowley probably wouldn't even speak to him again after today's fiasco. There was no harm in indulging this infatuation, in imagining that today had gone differently—that Aziraphale's whole life had gone differently. 

"I’m not sure I’m hungry anymore," Crowley had said, getting back into the truck and slotting the keys into the ignition with a trembling hand. 

Aziraphale lay back on his bed and imagined a different evening unspooling before him, imagined himself as a braver man. 

"Wait," Aziraphale said, "what about the end to our date?" For, in this world, it had been a date, it had always been a date. There was no reason for it not to be. 

"You..." Crowley said, "you still want to come home with me?" 

"Of course, but darling—" Aziraphale would touch Crowley's chin with his fingers, draw his face towards his own in the harsh light of the gas station. "Looking like this?" 

Aziraphale would reach into the glove compartment for blush and lipstick and eyeliner and Crowley would lean into the cupped palm of Aziraphale's hand, the way he had done once long ago in the high school boys bathroom. Crowley would let him apply it to his cheeks and mouth and around the twin lamps of his eyes—for in this fantasy Crowley's face was whole, unmarred by the twisting, layered whorls of scar and tattoo. 

And then later, after the drive back to the small house on the hill, after dessert, Crowley would hold out a hand and Aziraphale would follow him to the bedroom. Aziraphale closed his eyes to imagine what it might look like—wood paneling on the walls perhaps, a carpeted floor, or linoleum maybe, a handmade quilt on the bed. The details blurred and swayed, lost in the imagined press of Crowley's lips, the slow drag of his fingertips up Aziraphale's thigh, the way Aziraphale's own hand had now found its way inside his boxers, moving inexorably towards a release that he knew would only wind him tighter. 

He shucked his clothes off, let his unoccupied hand drift to the bottom drawer of his night stand—not the top drawer, although Crowley's presence lingered there too. Crowley would fuck him, Aziraphale decided. He might make Aziraphale beg for it first, tease a little, but then he would slide in, warm and hard and full of life—unlike the cold press of the toy Aziraphale retrieved and held against himself—whispering "I've got you, I've got you," slick skin on skin. Aziraphale would want it. Aziraphale would welcome it without grief or fear, for in this fantasy, Aziraphale, too, was whole again, unmarred by thirty years of regret and shame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you skipped the scene between +++ markings, a man arrives at the gas station and explicitly threatens Crowley with violence. Aziraphale recognizes the man as Sandy, from his high school football team, and Aziraphale’s presence diffuses the tension. After the encounter, Crowley is shaken, Aziraphale tries to brush it off as a misunderstanding. Aziraphale tells Crowley that he would be better off and safer if he dressed in a more masculine fashion, and Crowley takes offense, dropping him off at the bookshop instead of continuing their evening. 
> 
> \----
> 
> While writing this chapter, I kept thinking about this [painting by Edward Hopper.](https://www.artic.edu/artworks/111628/nighthawks) It’s long been a favorite of mine. I love how the harsh light in the diner creates a small bubble of solitude set apart from the windswept street, which the painting’s viewer can only observe from a distance. We are not actually invited inside. A few days ago, friends pointed out to me that there is a Good Omens [adaptation of the same painting](https://princip1914.tumblr.com/post/633276429676773376). It is gorgeous and moody, you should check it out! 
> 
> It didn’t make it into the final cut, but you should know that in my heart I am certain that Aziraphale ordered crepes for dinner. 
> 
> Although this chapter ends on a note of tension, I promise that it will be resolved over the course of the next two chapters! While I wait to upload the next chapter, I will try to share some snippets from later, happier, moments on tumblr to help offset the sad ending to this one. 
> 
> As always, please feel free to leave me a note here or on tumblr if you want to chat about the story! Thanks for reading!


	9. December, 1984: Aziraphale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank’s again to my beta[ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile)! 
> 
> This chapter is set in a realistic version of 1980s West Virginia. As such, Bee in this AU uses she/her pronouns and Pollution uses he/him pronouns. You are free to imagine their internal lives and concepts of gender however you wish. 
> 
> If you came here looking for resolution after the last chapter, don’t worry; it’s coming. We just have a bit more backstory to get through first. 
> 
> CW: implied physical abuse, implied alcohol abuse, bad family dynamics, internalized homophobia

Crowley was always getting into trouble. Black eyes, split lips, bruised cheekbones. He covered his injuries with some kind of opaque makeup, ducking into the little-used upstairs bathroom at school to apply it. He probably thought he was being subtle, but Aziraphale noticed. Aziraphale noticed a great many things where Crowley was concerned. 

Aziraphale brought it up only once, early on in their arrangement. 

"Who?" he asked, settling next to Crowley on the rotting pew. 

Crowley swiped at his eye, finger coming away pale with concealer. "No one. Doesn’t matter."

Aziraphale didn’t ask again, but he had seen how Luke staggered across the coal yard on the days he managed to come to work. He had seen Hastur stick out a foot to trip Crowley, saw Ligur kick him while he was down, then watched the two of them go on walking while Crowley struggled to his feet amidst a stream of grey-faced miners who did nothing to stop it.

Crowley got into fights at school too. He was prickly and rude and thought he was smarter than everyone else. The problem, Aziraphale thought, was that he was right. He _was_ smarter than everyone else. It was obvious. It was insufferable. If only he could pretend, if only Crowley could learn to slip into the crowd, keep his head down, stop asking so many questions—in class, at the mine, at home, where, presumably, the answer to everything was Luke’s fist. But he was too different, and he didn’t try to hide it. It only led to trouble. 

It wasn’t Aziraphale’s business what kind of trouble Crowley got into. But he worried anyway, and told himself that he was worried because if Crowley was hurt too badly, the arrangement would be compromised. The problem sets would not be done on time. 

Aziraphale worried about Crowley, and he wondered. He wondered if there might be some way to keep Crowley out of trouble. He wondered where Crowley kept the concealer that he used to cover his injuries. He wondered if Crowley had stolen it from Bee, or from the dollar store downtown, or if he’d bought it outright, marched right up to the counter and purchased something meant to go on a woman’s face. He wondered if it hurt when he put it on over his bruises. 

***  
Crowley had let him fly the model plane on the hillside until dusk had fallen and their breath came cloudy in the air and the battery indicator on the remote controller was flashing red. 

Aziraphale hadn’t wanted to be done even then, to drag out the evening, drag out the corners of the half smile Crowley gave him, pull it into a full grin. He had wanted to keep Crowley’s hands right where they were, warm and confident and covering his own on the controller of the little plane. But it was late, daylight was fading. They stumbled through the darkening woods to the road where Aziraphale’s truck waited on the shoulder. 

"Need a ride home?"

"Nah,"Crowley shifted on his feet. His smile had fallen from his face. "I’ll walk."

"Are you sure? It’s nearly dark."

But Crowley waved him away with one elegant hand, set off along the gravel shoulder. 

Aziraphale drove home, headlights cutting through the bare trees. At the end of a long, straight drive, the house glimmered in an empty, clear-cut field, light from a long row of upstairs windows spilling out onto the dead grasses all around. 

Aziraphale unlocked the door as quietly as he could. The backs of his hands were still warm with the impression of Crowley’s palms. Ridiculous. They’d parted ways nearly twenty minutes ago. The heat of Crowley’s skin ought not to have lingered. 

Aziraphale crept through the dark front hallway towards the kitchen, intending to pick up his dinner from the freezer, microwave it, and carry it up to his room as he did whenever Gabe worked late in the study and his father was away—nearly every night. But no such luck tonight; the lights were on in the dining room. 

"Where were you?" his father asked. He and Gabe were seated, straight backed, at the long shining expanse of the dining room table, only ever used when their father was in town. He must have returned early from New York. Three TV dinners steamed gently in their trays on individual vinyl placemats. The sun had gone down entirely; the sky beyond the windows was pitch black. The room, lit only by the dim bulbs of the formal overhead chandelier, was dark with flickering shadows. 

"Football practice,"Aziraphale said reflexively; sitting, spine stiff, in front of the remaining boxed dinner. He carefully removed the plastic film that covered the tray. Meatballs with gravy, green beans, plain pasta on the side. A glass of milk sat next to the tray. Gabe and his father were drinking whisky out of cut crystal tumblers. 

"Your curfew was up ten minutes ago,"his father pointed through the open door to the tall and narrow grandfather clock in the hall. "You’re late, boy."

Aziraphale bent his head. "I’m sorry sir. It won’t happen again."

"It had better not. We were about to say grace without you, but now you’re here, you can lead us."

Aziraphale took the hands that were held out to him. 

"Our dear heavenly father…"he began, murmuring the well-known words, blinking down at the grey meatballs swimming in their reheated sauce—nothing had been cooked properly in this house for years—feeling the cold press of Gabe’s signet ring against his palm. 

"...give thanks this day,"Aziraphale finished, but his mind was no longer at the dining room table. It had taken flight, risen above the cooling dinner tray, through the roof of the house, soared breathlessly through blue sky alongside an airplane that dipped and whirled. "Amen."

"Amen."

***

Aziraphale had been an accident. His father had told him so, bending low to speak directly into his ear, with breath that stank of whiskey. It was one of Aziraphale’s first childhood memories. _You were a mistake. We didn’t intend to have you._

Aziraphale tried to be especially good to make up for it. But he wasn’t like Gabe, naturally handsome, effortlessly charming, years older, already a high school student when Aziraphale was still a child, staying out late at parties, spending the night with girls and lying about it at home. Aziraphale was well-behaved, respectful, formal to a fault. It never seemed to matter. For all that Gabe and their father got into screaming fights when he slunk home late at night, for all of Gabe’s disobedience, it always blew over by morning. "Boys will be boys,"their father would sigh over breakfast and then both he and Gabe would turn to Aziraphale, look at him sadly as if he were the one who had done something wrong. 

Then Gabe had gone on to college and for a while it had just been Aziraphale and his father, with nothing to say to one another at the dinner table in the evening. This stilted silence lasted until it was broken by the roar of a truck pulling back into the drive four years later, Gabe with his freshly printed engineering degree in hand, ready to take over the day to day operation of the mine. The Gabe who returned was different from the careless, unruly boy who left. He knew how to wear a suit. He didn’t come home late. He was serious and diligent and sat with their father into the evening hours in the study pouring over geologic reports and expense sheets. He was saving up money to propose to a woman he had met in college. He kept a picture of her on the end table in the hallway, visited her nearly every Saturday at her family’s apartment in Morgantown. 

With Gabe back, Aziraphale became invisible again, which was fine. Better than fine, actually, because it meant he could slip off unnoticed to Agnes’ shop, to a ruined church on the hillside to exchange problem sets with a lanky boy who was always getting into trouble. 

Some of the trouble Azirpahale heard about at school. Some of it he heard about at home. 

"We had another roof fall. Graveyard shift this time," Gabe said, fine metal silverware scraping against the soft styrofoam bottom of the microwavable tray. Dinner this evening was pureed peas, mashed potatoes, a freezer-burned Chicken Kiev, the sides and entrees each tucked neatly into their own sections of the divided tray. "Uriel’s looking into it, I’m sure it was human error. I swear half these guys wouldn’t know a roof bolt if it hit them in the face."

Aziraphale had a sudden vision of the roster, of shuffling cards in the Sunday afternoon light slanting through the high windows of the administration building. He couldn’t remember, now, if he had put Crowely on a graveyard shift this week. He could feel the frayed edge of Crowley’s personnel card between his fingertips, a sense memory so sudden and visceral that his fork went tumbling out of his grasp, clattered on the polished surface of the table. Across the table, Gabe frowned at him. Their father turned his blue eyes on Aziraphale, gaze stern. 

"Sorry," Aziraphale muttered, picking up the fork. 

He could still feel Crowley’s card in his hand, but he could not remember, now, if he had put Crowley down for a shift today or tomorrow, if he had assigned him the midnight shift or the 5pm shift. 

"Well, mining’s a dangerous job,"their father said, taking a sip of whisky. "We can’t be held responsible for every little thing that happens down there."

"Right!"Gabe gestured with his fork. "But now, of course, the union’s hounding me about _working conditions_ and sayin’ other things too, sayin’ we charge too much at the store—"

"We charge market price, and then a little bit. If they don’t like it, they can just go buy whatever they need at the general store in Bethel Creek."

"That’s what I said, but of course, they come back at me saying they can’t afford to go to the general store, they’ve gotta buy on credit at our store ‘cause they don’t have cash,"Gabe said, warming to the topic. 

Aziraphale stabbed his fork into the congealing peas on his plate, but he could not bring himself to raise it to his mouth. The metal of the fork was cool and smooth in his hand, but beneath it, he had the oddest sensation that he was still holding the worn cardstock personnel card, that his hand was somehow in two places at once, both here at the dinner table and back in Administration two days ago playing a measured, gruesome sort of solitaire, assigning some men—assigning one man—to a graveyard shift that could become an actual grave, humming all the while, hymns from that morning—

"—and it’s not even the whole union, just the usual shit-stirrers. Hastur, Ligur, some others. ‘Course, they don’t have cash for the store in Bethel Creek on account of having drank all their paychecks all at the bar downtown—”

"Excuse me,"Aziraphale said. Gabe cut off mid-sentence, turned to look at him. His father turned too. In this house, Aziraphale was far more often spoken to than speaking. They were both looking, both waiting, both wondering what he could possibly have to say. 

"Was anyone hurt?"

"What?"Gabe cocked his head to the side. "Hurt when?"

"In the roof fall. You just—" Aziraphale swallowed. "You just were talking about a roof fall."

"I was talking about the store,"Gabe frowned. "Before that you mean?"

"Yes."

"Michael keeps personnel records,"Gabe shrugged. "I think some of the crew were a bit banged up, but you’ll have to check with him for details. Nothing serious I don’t think."

Aziraphale exhaled, stared down at his peas, unclenched his hand from his fork. When he looked up, they were both still staring at him, Gabe and his father, as though he was one of the antique mahogany chairs that had suddenly come to life and started talking. 

"Why?" Gabe asked. 

"I—I do the rosters,"Aziraphale said. "On Sundays. You asked me too. I wanted to know—I wanted to know if there was anything I would need to change. Going forward."

Gabe shrugged. "I don’t think so."

Aziraphale nodded, but he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure at all. 

***

"Aziraphale, you can’t just take me off the underground crew whenever you feel like it,"Crowley paced, agitated, down the aisle of the ruined church, the woods darkening around them "The whole point of the arrangement is to put me at the coal face. What’s gotten into you? 

"Nothing," Aziraphale said stiffly, thinking of the cool metal of the fork in his hand, the papery softness of a personnel card, the lurch of terror. "Nothing at all."

Crowley peered closely at him. There was something about his eyes today, something different that Aziraphale couldn’t quite place. "I don't understand, did I do something? Did I offend you?"

"No, of course not—"

"Whatever it is, I’m sorry, I’ll make it up to you, I swear." Crowley spread his hands. 

_It's not safe_ , Aziraphale wanted to scream. _Don’t you see it’s not safe_. But the words stuck in his throat. "There was a roof fall last week," he managed, "I just thought—" 

"Ah,"Crowley breathed. His expression cleared, shifted into something more complicated. He moved like a shadow to sit next to Aziraphale on the rotting pew. "It’s fine,"he said. "Aziraphale, it’s fine."His voice was gentle and soft. It made Aziraphale want to recoil, made him want to press closer. "Mining has its risks. I know that, I'm not worried about it." 

"But what if—”

"I’m not worried about it,"Crowley said firmly. "Next week you’ll change the roster, yeah? Put me back on the coal face underground?"

"I just—" Aziraphale cast about for something else to say, for some way to impress upon Crowley the terrible blank expression that had crossed Gabe’s face when Aziraphale asked about the roof fall, the awful truth that despite what he thought of himself, his cockiness, his sardonic, captivating half-smile, his _brilliance_ , Crowley was no one. He didn’t _matter_. If he was hurt or killed underground, no one would care. 

(Aziraphale would care.) 

"I—"Aziraphale tried again, then looked into Crowley’s face and saw that it was hopeless. "I’ll put you back on the underground crew,"he sighed. 

"Good."Crowley hadn’t moved away. He was crowded up against Aziraphale in the frosty mountain air, the long line of his denim clad thigh nearly touching Aziraphale’s own. 

"Is Hastur really planning a strike?" Aziraphale asked, just to have something to say. 

Crowley snorted inelegantly. 

"Hastur talks a big game," Crowley said. "I don’t know if he’ll actually do anything. If he does it won’t be with the union’s backing. The union don’t want to cause trouble, and most of the bosses have been paid off anyway by your family."

Crowley shot Aziraphale a sidelong glance, as if waiting for Aziraphale to deny it. He didn’t. He’d seen the expense records after all, both the ones that Gabe kept on file in the Administration building for the state regulators and the other ones, the ones he kept in a drawer in the desk at home, stuffed behind a pile of old receipts. Crowley cleared his throat. "Anyway, Hastur does hate me though, thinks I think I’m too good to be down in the mines with him."

"You are," Aziraphale said, and was embarrassed at how quickly he said it. 

Crowley blinked about him. "It’s not about good or bad, you know that right? It’s just luck. The shit luck to be born in this shit town with a drunk for a dad."

It was the first time Aziraphale had heard Crowley acknowledge it. The words hung in the air. Aziraphale swallowed hard. "I’m sorry about Luke."

"Well,"Crowley looked away. "He doesn’t mean to be the way he is. Not really. He don’t know what he’s doing half the time."

"Still, it’s not right what he—" Aziraphale cut himself off, forced some cheer into his voice that he didn’t feel. "You know, it’s even more impressive what you’re making of yourself, Crowley—all AP classes, applying to the Academy—given where you’re coming from."

Crowley gave him a withering look. "Stop it, that’s patronizing. Anyway, it doesn’t work like that."

"Doesn’t work like what?"

"It’s not some camel in the eye of the needle bullshit. It’s just—if you’re poor, then you're poor. If your dad’s a drunk, then your dad’s a drunk. It doesn’t _mean_ anything more than that. Clawing your way out of it isn’t _special_ , it’s just _harder_."

Crowley’s face was flushed from his outburst, Aziraphale had clearly touched a nerve. He didn’t quite know what to say. "I didn’t know you um…read the bible?"he settled on eventually. 

Crowley scowled. "I don’t."

In the evening light, the skin beneath Crowley’s eyes was delicate, ashen—he must not be sleeping much. Perhaps that was what was different about his face today. Aziraphale wanted to touch that darkened place just under his eye to see if it was as soft and tender as it looked. Fragile. Aziraphale couldn’t stop the words from spilling out. 

"I just wish—I just wish you would be safe, that’s all. Stay out of trouble."

"I do, mostly," Crowley said. "Anyway, I’ll be rid of Luke soon. Rid of this whole place. And I’ve got something on Hastur so he can’t maim me underground no matter how much he despises me—"

"What do you have on Hastur?"

An odd, closed expression appeared on Crowley's face. "Something big enough to keep him from making my life hell. Do you have the problem sets for today?"

But Aziraphale felt about gossip the same way he did about having a stone in his boot; he couldn’t go on until he got it out. "What could you possibly have on Hastur? The man has no life, all he ever does is hang around the coal yard and the bar downtown." 

The closed expression on Crowley's face turned shifty. "You promise you won't tell? It's a big secret, and it's all the leverage I have on him. If it gets out I've got nothing." 

"Of course I'll keep it a secret," Aziraphale said. _I've kept you a secret, after all_ , he didn't say. _For months now_.

"Hastur and Ligur are—" Crowley made a crude gesture with his hands. 

"No!"

"Yeah. Walked in on them myself. That's how I know. That's how _they_ know I know. They saw me." 

"Really?" Aziraphale’s face felt hot, even in the cold air. 

Crowley nodded. 

"But Hastur is so—and Ligur—" Aziraphale didn't have words, really, to express what he was trying to convey. Hastur in his dirty oversized overcoat and Ligur, tall, taciturn, and muscular belonged _here_ in Eden. They were a world away from the simpering, well-dressed, soft sort of creatures Aziraphale assumed lived on either coast. And anyway, that sort of—thing—didn't happen in Eden. 

"Not very glam, are they?" Aziraphale said finally, squirming under the weight of Crowley's gaze. 

"Don't have to be glam to want to—" Crowley made the rude gesture again. Watching his elegant, long fingers mime such a crude act, Aziraphale felt a bit faint. 

Crowley let his hands fall to his sides. "I am though."

Aziraphale started, jumped away from him on the pew. "Crowley, _what_?"

Crowley grinned, a bright, sharp smile that Aziraphale knew with a hopeless sort of anticipation would reappear in his dreams. Crowley leaned in closer still, fluttered his eyes shut in an exaggerated slow motion so that Aziraphale could finally see what was different about them. Eyeliner, dark and striking, had been applied to his lids. When his eyes opened again, they met Aziraphale’s. 

"Glam," Crowley whispered, red mouth curling around the word. 

***

It was bitterly cold in the evenings, the hint of snow on the air. Football practice took place under the lights well into the dark night. Even if Aziraphale had wanted to do his own problem sets, he never would have had the time. On weekends, Gabe looked askance at the problems he turned in. 

"When did you do these?"he asked. 

"Saturday night,"Aziraphale said, because it was true. He had met up with Crowley then, breath clouding in the frosty air by the church. He had dug in his bag for minutes while Crowley looked on, finally coming up short. 

"Drat, I must have left the problem sets in the truck."

Crowely walked down the hill with him, helped him rummage through the cab of the truck, but it was hopeless—Aziraphale had remembered on the way down the hill that they were sitting on his dresser back home. He had forgotten to put them in his bag this morning. 

"I’ll just be gone in a jiffy," he said, climbing into the drivers’ seat. "You stay here, we’ll meet back up in half an hour."

But Crowley had already gotten into the passenger seat. "Doesn’t seem very efficient. It’ll be dark in an hour. Let’s go together to pick them up."

"Absolutely not."

"Why not?"

"You can’t come to my _house_ Crowley, it’s already bad enough that we spend so much time together—"

"Gabe’s off in Morgantown, your dad’s in the city, and we’re just going to nip over and pick up your problem sets. I don’t see what the problem is," Crowley said, lounging back in his seat. 

"You’re impossible," Aziraphale muttered, but he was already starting the truck.

"I’ll take that as a compliment," Crowley stretched out long and lean on the seat next to Aziraphale. He shrugged out of his jacket with a sigh as the heat slowly filled the cab of the truck. 

Aziraphale glanced over. Crowley’s black t-shirt was snug on his narrow frame. It clung to the curve of his biceps, the defined swell of his chest. Half a year underground had only accentuated his sinewy strength. And anyway, Crowley must be working out again—swim season was starting soon. Aziraphale had forgotten.

Crowley caught him looking and an enigmatic half grin, both pleased and somehow sad, stole over his face. 

"Easy, tiger,"he said, stretching, muscles bunching and shifting under his thin shirt. "Eyes on the road."

***

"Look now, you’d better stay in the truck,"Aziraphale said sternly, parking in the drive. "I’ll be back out in a sec."

Crowley followed him inside anyway. Aziraphale let him and did not know why he was letting him. The foyer was dark; everyone was out. 

"You’re lucky," Aziraphale hissed as Crowley wiped his feet on the mat by the door with a conscientiousness that reeked of mockery. "What would you have done if Gabe or, worse, my father, had been home?"

Crowley shrugged. "They wouldn’t have been. Gabe’s in Morgantown isn’t he? And you told me your dad’s been in New York all week."

"Gabe could have gotten home early," Aziraphale protested. 

"He didn’t," Crowley said, "he’s too busy fucking his girl.”

"Crowley," Aziraphale gasped and whirled on him. 

Crowley stood in the shadowed hallway, expression flat and somehow hungry. "What? It’s true."

"Gabe’s waiting for marriage."

"That’s what he’s telling her parents, not what he’s doing." Crowley licked his lips. Aziraphale watched the flicker of his tongue. He seemed to be hesitating. An odd sort of tension crackled between them, but when Crowley next spoke it was in his normal sort of voice. For some reason, Aziraphale had expected it to be hushed. "Lots of people say one thing and do another. Lots of people have secrets."

Aziraphale regarded Crowley in the half light for a perilous moment that felt perched on the edge of a cliff, and then swallowed and said, "not us. Not the Wrights."

Crowley shrugged, stepped forward out of the shadow by the door. The tension fluttered, broke. "If you say so. Now are you going to show me around?"

"Shoes off," Aziraphale sighed, shutting the door. He led the way into the house. Crowley trailed behind him. He was putting on a good show of nonchalance, but his eyes widened as he stared around the entryway and ran a hand along the slick wood banister at the base of the stairs. 

"It’s really nice,"Crowley said, hushed. "Your house I mean."

"It’s...it’s fine I suppose,"Aziraphale said. His skin prickled. Crowley shouldn’t be here. How could they possibly be here together? What were they going to do together here? 

They were going to get the problem sets. They were going to get them from Aziraphale’s room and then they were going to leave. 

"Thanks for inviting me over,"Crowlely said, opening the door of a linen closet and peering inside. 

"I didn’t invite you over,"Aziraphale snapped. "You just came in."

The corner of Crowley’s lip quirked up and all at once he was laughing, a real laugh, accompanied by a wide smile that twisted in Aziraphale’s gut, sparked something—dread, excitement, or both. Then, Aziraphale laughed too. They both laughed. They were laughing together, here, in the Wright family home, where Aziraphale never laughed. Something of the fierce, terrified ache in Aziraphale’s chest unknotted, and did not disappear exactly, but diffused, migrated into his bones where it was easier to bear. 

"I love it when you’re rude," Crowley blurted out. 

"What an odd thing to say."

"No, really, I do," Crowley wasn’t laughing anymore, but a smile still hung around his face, relaxed his jaw. "You’re so uptight all the time. So polite. So afraid of saying the wrong thing. So nice. All. The fucking. Time."

"I _am_ nice," Aziraphale said. 

Crowley’s face changed, softened. "Yeah,"he breathed. "You are."

***

A week earlier, Aziraphale had come home to all the lights on in the house, blazing like a bonfire against the dark sky. Inside, he hung up his coat, wiped his shoes on the mat and walked cautiously to the dining room. 

"Aziraphale, we have a guest for dinner today, come on over." Gabriel gestured to the seat next to him, pulled out from the table. His pinky ring glinted in the soft light of the chandelier. 

A stranger sat at the table across from Aziraphale. He was naturally dark skinned, but there was something about him that gave the impression of grey colorlessness. He looked nearly washed out against the rich mahogany of the tabletop. His hair was pale and straggly and hung, unkempt, down to his ears. His eyes were lighter than the rest of him, blue and eerie.

"Mr. Chalky, this is my younger son Aziraphale," their father said from the distant head of the table. "He's interning with us this year, very bright. I'm sure he will be interested in your proposal." 

The man stood and reached across the table. Aziraphale took the offered hand. It was wet and clammy with sweat, the grip limp. He met Aziraphale's gaze with his strange pale eyes and Aziraphale felt an involuntary shiver race down his spine, the first time he had literally understood the expression, _I feel like someone walked across my grave._

"I represent the interests of several financers who have been considering investing in West Virginia coal for some time now," the man said. "We've recently helped several Kentucky mines, family operations just like yours, to transition from old fashioned underground operations to modern removal technologies. Your brother was gracious enough to invite me over for dinner to discuss a...mutually beneficial collaboration." 

Aziraphale glanced down at Gabe. He was regarding Chalky with rapt attention, and did not seem to share the same, inexplicable twist of aversion that had shot through Aziraphale’s nerves as soon as the man had touched him. 

"Well, sit down, sit down," Gabe gestured. "Dinner first, then business." 

Dinner was not the usual frozen fare. A freshly broiled steak steamed at the center of the table, surrounded by side dishes—a green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, a bowl of jello, salad. Aziraphale's stomach grumbled as he looked at the food. A plain woman with dark hair detached herself like a shadow from the corner of the room, picked up the platter of steak and began to serve it. She wore a gingham apron tied over a worn dress that had clearly seen better days. With a start, Aziraphale recognized her as Crowley's older sister, Bee. 

"Unfortunately we're a family of bachelors," their father said, "although Gabe here is looking to change that sometime soon." Gabe smiled an abashed, _good country boy_ sort of smile into the mashed potatoes that Bee flung onto his plate with barely suppressed bad grace.

"Had to hire a local girl. She's plain but she's a good cook," their father continued as if Bee wasn't right there. "I know it's not what you're used to in New York City, but I hope it will be adequate." 

"You know I think it's rather quaint," Mr. Chalky said, cutting into his steak. He took a bite, juices dripping down his chin and onto his shirt. "Country hospitality." He made no move to clean his shirt or wipe the grease off his face. 

Gabe laughed, a short bark of sound, "I'm glad you're enjoying your stay in Eden. Anything to make you more comfortable." 

He turned and fixed his gaze on Bee, who had melted back into the corner after serving their food. "Honey, why don't you be a darlin' and refill Mr. Chalky's wine." 

Silently, Bee moved to the bar in the corner. Gabe's eyes tracked the sway of her backside.

Bee returned with the wine and leaned over Mr. Chalky's shoulder to pour it. Aziraphale followed the line of Gabe's gaze to where it hovered with an ugly sort of focus on the swell of Bee's chest disappearing beneath the neckline of her dress. Bee did not look down at the wine as she poured it; she looked across the table. Her face was carefully blank but her eyes were dark and full of emotion. They swept over Gabe, their father, and then over Aziraphale too, and there was nothing in them but seething hatred. 

***

"I hope you didn't eat the steak," Crowley said as he moved through the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets seemingly at random, running his hand over the marble countertops. 

Aziraphale, flustered by their proximity in the hallway, by the curve of Crowley’s lips as he breathed _you are_ , had somehow agreed to a full tour. He regretted it immensely. Watching Crowley amble through the game room and the TV room and the spare bedrooms and now the kitchen was a singularly odd experience. It made Aziraphale feel itchy. He had never quite realized how comically large the house was before, how absurd it was to have so many rooms for so few people. Crowley had commented on everything as though he were narrating a sort of nature documentary; monotone, condescending even, but there was something else less easily identifiable swirling in his voice. Aziraphale couldn’t tell if it was jealousy or pity. 

"Steak?" he asked, lacing his fingers together to keep his nervous hands from fidgeting. 

"The one my sister cooked for you, last weekend."

"Oh, yes. I—I did eat it actually. It was very good. Should I not have?"

"Course it was good. Bee’s a great cook. So am I. Our mother taught us both, before she died." Crowley turned and his cool demeanor slipped for a second as he met Aziraphale’s gaze. "But, uh, Bee spat on the steak. Thought I should let you know." 

"Why...why would she do that?" 

Crowley blinked at him. "In case you missed it, my family ain't a big fan of yours." 

"She _did_ agree to make and serve dinner though." 

"Agree? Blackmailed more like," Crowley shut a drawer with a snap. "Your brother came ‘round and cornered her, said he'd start collecting on Luke's debt at the store if she didn't come by and cook." 

"Oh," Aziraphale scrubbed his palms down the front of his jeans and didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry." 

Crowley looked at him oddly, "why're you sorry? You ain't your brother. Anyway, aren’t you going to show me to your room?"

***

After dinner, they had retired to the wood paneled study with its narrow windows.

"Aziraphale, get the projector set up, will you?" their father asked. Aziraphale wheeled the slide projector out of the closet, and snapped together a tripod and screen that Gabe and his father occasionally used to project geologic maps. 

Chalky had come prepared with a pre-assembled carousel of slides. He withdrew it from a stained leather box, and settled it on the projector with the bored, practiced air of a man who had given the same presentation many times. 

Aziraphale moved to go, but Gabe’s hand on his arm stayed him on the way out the door. "You’ll want to watch this,"Gabe said in his ear. "It’s the future of mining."

So Aziraphale stood straight-backed in the corner of the room, as the lights dimmed and visions of ruin flickered across the screen. 

A hillside covered with trees. 

"Before. Harlan County, Kentucky," Chalky said. The click of the slide projector. 

A vast, empty plain of mud. 

"After," Chalky said. "The estimated profit margin on this operation was in the millions."

_Click._

A mountain in spring, new leaves feathering the tops of the trees as they brushed the horizon. 

"Pike County, Kentucky" Chalky said.

_Click._

The entrance to a mineshaft, a man emerging from the ground with a haggard expression on his face. 

"The owners of this mine were losing thousands of dollars a day. They thought the seam had run out. But they didn’t realize they were still sitting on a pile of untapped riches."

_Click._

Another view of the same mountain, this time in fall. Full color. Spectacular red and yellow leaves. 

_Click._

A backhoe sifting through grey rubble. 

"This is what it looks like now," Chalky said. "Three years later, they’ve entirely turned their business around."

_Click._

A familiar landscape. The silhouette of Eden Mountain against the sky. Aziraphale recognized it with a shiver, an echo of the same sensation he had felt when Chalky took his hand. 

"We at White Consulting LLC believe that there’s no point in owning coal producing real estate if you only mine a fraction of it.”

_Click._

The entrance to Shaft 13 across the coal yard from the Administration building. 

_Click._

A shearer parked in a low tunnel. 

"With these outdated techniques, gentleman, I hate to say it, you’re leaving coal in the ground."

_Click._

A topographical map. Eden County, West Virginia. 

"What’s the point of coal in the ground? It doesn’t make you any money. It doesn’t keep the lights on."

_Click._

A close up of rocky soil that looked like it could have been taken on the surface of the moon. 

"Gentleman this is _progress_. This is the future." Chalky said. His voice broke on the last word. He drew a stained handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed at his eyes. "Isn’t it just so beautiful?"

***

"In here,"Aziraphale said, opening the door of his room with a trembling hand. 

Crowley looked around, eyes wide. Aziraphale cringed. It was neat, of course. The bed was made precisely. Nothing was out of place, but Aziraphale felt suddenly terribly embarrassed about the room, about his childhood things arranged on the surfaces and the walls. 

He snatched up the problem sets from where they were, indeed, sitting on the dresser and motioned for Crowley to go, but Crowely had wandered over to inspect a pile of books next to the bed. "Are you restoring these?"

"Yes," Aziraphale said stiffly, "for Agnes."

Crowley nodded approvingly, and reached down to run a hand over the spine of the topmost book. Aziraphale shivered. 

"They look really good,"Crowley said, and then without warning, flopped back onto Aziraphale’s bed. 

"What are you doing?"Aziraphale asked, mouth dry. 

Crowley patted the bed next to him in invitation, raised his eyebrows, said nothing. 

"Aren’t we going back to the church?"

"It’s nice and warm here, all your family’s out. Come on over. Bring the problem sets."

Aziraphale shuffled the papers in nerveless fingers, but his feet were already carrying him over to the end of the bed. He looked down at Crowley spread out there, dark clothes like a stripe of black paint on the crisp white sheets, and the scene tilted, shifted. For some reason, Aziraphale was thinking of Gabe in his girlfriend’s apartment. It was a world away from Eden, surely. Aziraphale had never been invited over, but he imagined she lived somewhere adult and cosmopolitan. Feminine. She probably had fresh flowers displayed in a vase and wore perfume which scented the air around her. She didn’t lie sprawled out beneath an illustration from _Last of the Moheicans_ taped to the wall, next to a framed version of Rudyard Kipling’s _If_ —a gift from Aziraphale’s father on his sixteenth birthday. She wasn’t surrounded by pee-wee football trophies and science fair medals and the remnants of a half eaten scone on the bedside table. Why was he thinking of her? 

Crowley was still looking at him expectantly, waiting. One of his socks had slid down his foot and his pant leg had ridden up just a bit, just enough to expose the sliver of an ankle as fine-boned and delicate as the rest of him. Aziraphale stared down at it and, moving slowly as though he was underwater, reached his hand out, curved it around the bone. Crowley moved his leg, not away, but towards the pressure of Aziraphale’s fingers. It was warm beneath Aziraphale’s hand. He curled his fingers behind the ankle bone, felt Crowely’s pulse there, juddering quickly beneath his fingertips.

"The problem sets Aziraphale?"Crowley asked. He sounded out of breath. 

Aziraphale realized with a start how odd it was to be touching Crowley like this, inappropriate even. There was no rational explanation for his behavior, no rational explanation except—he tugged Crowely’s sock back up with his fingers, patted his ankle awkwardly through the cloth. "There you are,"he said withdrawing his hand. "Didn’t….didn’t want you to get cold feet."

Crowley just stared at him, then huffed out a laugh. "No chance of that I think," he muttered. 

"A commercial dump truck can carry 14 cubic yards of dirt—" Aziraphale began reading off the paper, still standing at the foot of the bed. 

Crowley made a low noise in his throat. "Aziraphale, come here."

This time, Aziraphale went. 

They lay on the narrow bed, facing each other. Crowley was breathing quickly. Aziraphale could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest. 

"Give it here,"Crowley said. 

Aziraphale handed over the problem set. Crowley’s eyes scanned it rapidly. His brow furrowed. 

"These are all kind of odd problems, aren’t they?"

"Mr. Chalky, the man who was at our house last weekend, suggested we strip the top off the mountain. Get at the coal that way. I think that’s what they’re about,"Aziraphale said. Something about the moment between them had broken, changed. Aziraphale was annoyed. He wanted to go back to that strange, unsettling thread of energy that had crackled when he touched Crowley’s skin. He didn’t want to think about Chalky’s images of destruction, about the mountainside flayed open like a field-dressed deer. 

"Makes sense," Crowely muttered, "this whole problem set is about what it would take, logistically, to make the switch from underground to above ground."

"They aren’t going to do it though," Aziraphale said, not entirely sure why he was telling Crowley all of this. "After Mr. Chalky left, my father and Gabe got into a big fight. Gabe thinks mountaintop removal is...what did he say... _the future of mining_. My father thinks the old ways are best. It would take something catastrophic to convince him to make the switch." 

"The union would never go for it neither," Crowley said, "not if Hastur, Ligur, and the rest have anything to say about it. All the best paying jobs are underground, they would disappear if the shafts closed and you started stripping everything off the top instead. They'll strike before it happens.”

"I thought you said Hastur was all bark and no bite?"

"He is," Crowley said. "For now."

Crowley shifted, rolled onto his stomach, the long line of his body pressing up against Aziraphale’s. And there it was again, that swooping sort of spark, unnerving and mesmerising. Aziraphale leaned his body against Crowley’s and Crowley did not move away. 

"I suppose we ought to get these over with. Do you have a pen?" Crowley asked. 

Aziraphale handed one over, leaned in close over Crowley’s shoulder as he sketched out the calculations. Crowley’s hair nearly brushed against Aziraphale’s nose. It smelled of peppermint and cigarettes, and ever so faintly of the metallic, earthy sort of smell that always hung around the mines, that Aziraphale had come to think of as the smell of coal.

"Well, that was straightforward at least," Crowley said, finishing off the first problem with a flourish of his hand. 

"Show me the next one?" Aziraphale asked, hardly daring to breathe in.

***

Aziraphale drove Crowley home. They had lain together on the bed as darkness fell all around, stayed there even after the problem set was finished. Aziraphale had been about to lift up a book from the pile by the bed, had been about to open it to let Crowley run his clever fingers along the stitching of the spine, when all at once the grandfather clock in the hall had struck loud and clear. It was fully night outside. They both scrambled up from the bed, startled. 

"Gabe will be home soon—you had better—we had better—" Aziraphale said. 

"Yeah,"Crowley said, "yeah."

Crowley was quiet in the truck. "Where do you live?" Aziraphale asked for the third time. Crowley seemed lost in thought, wasn’t speaking beyond one or two word directions. 

"It’s just right by the path to the church. You can drop me where you usually park."

"I’ll do no such thing, it’s dark and cold—"

"I’ll be fine, really, you’re not my guardian angel."

"Crowely, _please_."

"Alright,"Crowley sighed, mouth pulling into an unhappy line. "Keep going past where you park for the church. It’s the next right turn."

Aziraphale kept driving, didn’t realize where Crowley was leading them until they had pulled into the lot for the small collection of mouldering mobile homes that Aziraphale always passed on his way to meet Crowley. They were so run down he had always assumed they were abandoned. "Oh,"Aziraphale said. "Crowley. I didn’t know."

Crowley smiled at him, wry and a bit sad. "How else would I have found that old church? It’s in my backyard, Aziraphale."

"Which one is yours?" Aziraphale asked. 

"All the way at the end of the lot. But it’s best if you don’t drive over there. Not in the Wright company truck anyway. I’ll get out here. I’ll be in enough trouble as it is for getting home late without you making it worse."

"Oh,"Aziraphale said softly. "Alright then. Is Luke home?"

"Who knows?" Crowley still hadn’t moved. 

He was dropping Crowley off at home, Aziraphale realized. A sudden, absolutely absurd thought pushed itself to the fore of his mind, brought on perhaps by the dark interior of the truck, the heavy intimate silence, the strip of light that fell from the one working streetlamp through the windshield across the lower half of Crowley’s face; his narrow lips and sharp chin. _If this was a date, this is when you would lean over. This is when you would kiss him. That’s what he’s waiting for._

Aziraphale cleared his throat. "Well, I’ll see you in school on Monday I suppose."

"Yeah,"Crowley said, opening the door of the truck. "I’ll see you."

***

Crowley wasn’t in school on Monday. On Tuesday, he arrived late to first period, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled low over his face. 

Crowley was always getting into trouble. With Luke at home, with Hastur at the mine, with the others at school. Everywhere in Eden, Crowley was getting into trouble. He had a talent for it. 

Aziraphale didn’t ask him about it again. But that day, when Crowley slipped away halfway through first period, Aziraphale raised his hand to excuse himself and followed. 

The door of the upstairs boys bathroom creaked as it opened. Crowley whirled around, concealer brush halfway to an ugly cut on his cheekbone, a small bag clutched to his chest in his other hand. 

Aziraphale walked towards him across the cracked tile floor. Crowley did not move away and he did not move closer. The radiator hissed, sudden and loud. Crowley’s eyes dared Aziraphale to open his mouth, to say something about the cut, about the concealer, about the bag. Instead, Aziraphale held out a hand. Wordlessly, Crowley capped the concealer, pressed the small smooth bottle into Aziraphale’s palm, then, after a breath, handed over the bag too. Aziraphale unzipped it. Inside were two other kinds of concealer, a tube of red lipstick, eyeliner, eyeshadow. 

"Bee’s?" he asked. 

Crowley shook his head. 

"Did you get all this separately?" Aziraphale asked, looking at the red shine of the lipstick in its transparent plastic case. "Or did it come in a kit?"

"No kit," Crowley’s voice was low, skittish. For the first time in their acquaintance, Aziraphale thought he might be afraid. 

"Well then," Aziraphale said into the heavy silence. "You’d better hold still."

The stale smell of piss and lemon urinal cake blended with the hot metal scent of the radiator. Crowley didn’t move away as Aziraphale reached out with the concealer brush and daubed it, as gently as he could over Crowley’s bruised cheek. Crowley inhaled sharply, flinched on the second pass of the brush. Aziraphale stepped closer, until one of his own feet in its neatly tied loafer was inserted between Crowley’s ratty boots. Aziraphale put a hand on Crowley’s chin to hold him in place. Crowley’s skin was warm, just a hint of stubble under Aziraphlale fingers. Aziraphale held him there as he painted over his high cheekbone. 

"Alright?" Azirahale asked when he was done. 

"Alright," Crowley said, like a sigh, close enough that Azirahphale felt the warm rush of his breath on his lips. Aziraphale’s eyes flickered down to Crowley’s mouth, then back up again. Crowley blinked at him, darted his eyes to the black bag unzipped on the counter, and nodded in the cradle of Aziraphale’s palm. Aziraphale fished in the bag, one handed, drew out the eyeliner. 

"Close your eyes," he said. 

Crowley’s lids fluttered shut. His left eyelash brushed Aziraphale’s fingers, which had migrated of their own accord up the side of Crowley’s face. It was the lightest of touches, almost imaginary, like a butterfly landing. 

"Hold still," Aziraphale said, although Crowley showed no sign of moving. He drew the eyeliner pencil carefully around Crowley’s eyes. The effect was clumsy, dramatic, oddly arresting when Crowley’s eyes blinked open again and he stared, his pupils blown dark and wide. 

"Hold still," Aziraphale said again, barely a whisper, and rummaged in the bag for the lipstick, uncapped it with just his right hand, brought it up to the bow of Crowley’s mouth. He dragged the edge of it inexpertly from one corner to the other. Red bloomed in the wake of Aziraphale’s touch, stark against Crowley’s pale skin, against the faint blue of the bruise on his cheekbone that shone through the concealer. It should have looked wrong on Crowley’s angular, masculine face, but it didn’t look out of place it looked—

He looked—

Golden eyes flickered down to Aziraphale’s own lips. Aziraphale let go of Crowley’s chin, took two quick steps back.

The eyes flicked up again, met his. A question. A challenge. Like a man possessed, with the feeling that he could not control the motion of his own hand if he tried, Aziraphale raised the lipstick to his own mouth, pressed it there like a kiss. 

Crowely blinked at him and then they both turned to stare at one another in the cracked and distorted mirror. 

_This is how it would look_ , Aziraphale thought with a start as his eyes traced the reddened line of his own lips in the mirror, _if he had leaned in and put his mouth on mine the way he wanted to. This is how it would look if I had let him._

“What do you think?” Crowley asked, voice silky smooth. An answer hung in the air. Aziraphale opened his mouth, but he was not sure if he dared to speak it out loud. 

The bell rang. The corridor outside was suddenly full of the sound of feet, lockers slamming. The moment shattered into a million shards, diamond bright, knife sharp. Aziraphale crammed the cap back on the lipstick, shoved it all back inside the little bag, pushed it into Crowley’s unresisting grip. 

"I think we had better get this all washed off...class is out now, people are going to be coming in here…of all the ridiculous, foolish things—"

Aziraphale was grasping at the paper towels by the sink, blotting them to his face in something approaching panic. He thrust some at Crowley, but Crowley only smirked at him, silent and mysterious, winked at him with one flashy, glamorous eye, and was out the door into the noise of the crowd changing classes, leaving Aziraphale alone and shaking in a room that smelled of piss, with a handful of paper towels stained blood red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every week I set out to turn a chapter outline into a completed chapter and swear to myself it’s going to be short this time…and then we’re suddenly 8k and counting. I guess there is just a lot of story to tell. 
> 
> If you enjoyed getting a little deeper into Crowley and Aziraphale’s history with this chapter, feel free to leave a comment below or say hi on Tumblr. 
> 
> I am absolutely feral for this passage in the book: 
> 
> _People couldn’t become truly holy, [Aziraphale] said, unless they also had the opportunity to be definitively wicked. Crowley had thought about this for some time and, around about 1023, had said, Hang on, that only works, right, if you start everyone off equal, okay? You can’t start someone off in a muddy shack in the middle of a war zone and expect them to do as well as someone born in a castle. Ah, Aziraphale had said, that’s the good bit. The lower you start, the more opportunities you have. Crowley had said, That’s lunatic. No, said Aziraphale, it’s ineffable._
> 
> I tried to sneak the same sentiment, if not exactly those words, into this AU, let me know if you caught it. :P 
> 
> There will probably be a shorter wait between this chapter and the next. I’m excited to get back to the present-day storyline!


	10. Solstice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we’re back! A week ahead of schedule! If you were waiting to catch up on this story until you could be sure that the end of chapter 8 would have resolution, wait no longer. This chapter is the resolution. 
> 
> This chapter deals with questions of identity. Of course, there are a lot of different ways that people navigate their identities in the world. This is just my own take on how two characters with these particular backgrounds might think about gender and sexuality. 
> 
> Thanks as always to my beta, [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile), who worked extra hard to make a weekly update possible this round. 
> 
> CW: guns, reference to past physical abuse, canon character death referenced, discussion of homophobia.

Crowley hadn’t allowed himself to be properly miserable in a long time. There was a certain sort of pleasure in it, he reflected, as he trudged back up the hill to the house after letting the goats out for the day, like pressing into a bruise to see where it hurt. 

He abandoned his boots carelessly by the door, stripped out of his jeans and shirt on the way to the bedroom, letting them fall where they might in the hallway, and then flopped back onto the bed. 

Last night’s scene played again and again in his head, the way it had as he’d tossed and turned and could not sleep. Aziraphale got out of the truck at the gas station and something about him was imperceptibly, yet fundamentally different. His shoulders were squared in a way they usually weren’t, his jaw was set firm and hard. Gone was the shy sort of femininity, the fluttering of his hands, the gentle lilt of his voice. When he looked at Crowley, his blue eyes held no hint of recognition. _Oh, he’s not my friend_ , Aziraphale said, curt and dismissive. It hadn’t been hard to believe when he said it. Crowley paused there, replayed the scene again, this time imagining the scorn in Aziraphale’s voice dialed up even further, imagining a faint sneer on his cherubic features that certainly hadn’t been there in reality. _Oh he’s not my friend_. Crowley pressed his face into his pillow. It ached. It _ached_. He pushed on the bruise even harder, _oh he’s not my friend_ , jumped ahead to the shadowed cab of the truck as it navigated country roads, dug harder into the wound. Aziraphale’s voice, having slipped back into a catty sort of femme register, all the better to drive the knife in deeper, saying, arch and judgemental, _well if you didn’t dress like that_ …

Crowley flipped over onto his back, stared up at the ceiling. It was for the best really. He gotten far ahead of himself, allowed himself to consider all sorts of outlandish possibilities even though Aziraphale had given him no real indication of interest beyond a few flirty words and gestures. What, did he think Aziraphale was going to drop everything, his entire life in DC, cart his things out here to the countryside, and shack up in this dingy cinder block house with Crowley? Kiss him goodbye in the mornings when he left to go work on renovation projects around the state? Come home, smelling of freshly-shaved lumber and machine oil and dust and make love to him in the evenings, here, in this very bed, under these worn and probably asbestos-filled ceiling tiles?….yes, yes actually. That was what Crowley had thought. And it was laughable really, in the warm morning light. He had been foolish, he had deserved what Aziraphale had done to him at the gas station and afterwards. Aziraphale wanted him—it had been obvious that he did—that day when Aziraphale had visited the farm and fished and complimented the Bentley, and also on the drive to Ohio, at the Dowlings’, at the restaurant. Thirty years ago it had been obvious too. But all that _wanting_ meant nothing besides more secrets. All it meant was another summer of misaligned expectations, nighttime writhings that Aziraphale would deny by morning, another August of crushing heartbreak. They had done it all thirty years ago, Crowley had been a fool, an _absolute fool_ to expect that it would be any different now. 

Crowley’s phone rang from his jeans pocket, somewhere in the hallway. He ignored it. 

His expectations had been foolish, but Crowley’s mind was now stuck replaying a different set of scenes—Aziraphale’s soft _thank you_ at the restaurant, the way the tension in his shoulder blades seemed to relax when they were alone together, the frown lines in his forehead smoothed away, the laugh lines deepened. Crowley couldn’t stop thinking about the moment at the gas station, right before it the other truck pulled up and it all went to shit, when their small island of light in the dark woods transformed itself into another world. 

In that suspended bubble of time, it had seemed that he and Aziraphale were the only two people in the world and that they understood one another so perfectly there had been no need for language, and that distance between them was and always had been meaningless. He had bent towards the pump, and felt the ghostly brush of Aziraphale’s eyes over his shoulder blades, and had known, then, beyond a shadow of doubt that they were going to sleep together again. He understood, also, that sex with Aziraphale would be unlike sex with anyone who had come after him in Crowley’s life, because although they had been divided by years and years, they had always been meant to come together as one, the rejoining of two parts to make a whole. And then with the roar of an oncoming storm, the truck had arrived. Sandy’s long, threatening shadow broke like a wave over their small island of peace. The person who had gotten out of Crowley’s truck was not the same person he had had dinner with, not the same person he had loved all those years ago and never quite stopped loving. 

Crowley’s phone rang again, and again, and then a third time. It buzzed against the carpet with the presence of a new voicemail. 

What was Aziraphale doing now, Crowley wondered. Did he think this would blow over, the way their fights had as teenagers? Did he regret last night? It certainly seemed he did when Crowley had dropped him off. Good, Crowley thought, with a surge of the same anger flaring back up again. He had better regret it. Let him regret it for thirty years or more. It wouldn’t be enough. 

As soon as it had come, the hot anger cooled. If Crowley was angry at anyone, it was himself. He had nearly kissed Aziraphale, there in the parking lot of the restaurant, certainly would have kissed him later that night if they hadn’t stopped for gas. Crowley would have invited him inside, fed him bites of blueberry crumble, leaned in between spoonfuls to capture Aziraphale’s mouth with his own—

Instead, Crowley had returned to his house in the darkness, taken the lid off the dish of blueberry crumble, and eaten it alone with all the lights off, standing at the sideboard, until he felt sick. 

Because there was also this: Crowley had been angry, furious actually, at both Aziraphale and himself, but not so angry that he hadn't noticed how Aziraphale's hands trembled as he twisted the ring on his finger. Crowley had been angry, but Aziraphale—Aziraphale had been terrified. 

Another buzz from the hallway. A text, quickly followed by another. Crowley considered getting off the bed to check them, to listen to the voicemail, but that would have required action on his part, and he wasn’t quite done wallowing yet. 

_Oh we’re not friends_ , Aziraphale said again in the theater of Crowley’s mind. The gas station lighting was even harsher than it had been in real life, Sandy’s bulk even larger and more threatening. _We’re not friends_. 

Crowley lay back on the pillows, let the film play, let the fear and anger and sadness wash over him, until his mind was blank with it, and he slipped, fitfully, back into sleep. 

***

Someone was banging on the door. Crowley rolled over in his nest of dark sheets, spat out the corner of a pillowcase that had somehow found its way into his mouth. He felt brined and sweaty with the sticky grogginess of an unplanned nap. Crowley’s watch—a fancy fashion piece he had found at a garage sale—had pressed into his skin as he slept on it, left an ugly red mark behind on his wrist. 

The knocking continued. It was coming from the front door, all the way at the other end of the long hallway from Crowley’s bedroom. 

“Alright, alright,” Crowley muttered. He staggered into the hallway, fished around on the carpet for his shirt and jeans and pulled them on clumsily. Where the hell were his sunglasses? They didn’t seem to be anywhere in the hallway. In a burst of inspiration, Crowley patted the pockets of the jeans, withdrew the glasses in triumph and crammed them onto his face. The world muted into its usual sepia.

Crowley cracked his back and set off towards the door when he remembered again: the gas station, the harsh fluorescent light, the curdling pool of terror in his belly. Had he been followed here last night? Unlikely, but Crowley wasn’t about to take any chances. He detoured to the living room, rustled behind the wood box and drew out Luke's old shotgun. The shells were in a locked drawer in the kitchen. He fumbled with the keys. 

The knocking started up again, somehow quite polite despite its forcefulness, and Crowley knew, of course, who was behind the door but he broke the gun anyway, slotted two shells into place, and tucked it under his right arm before walking back out to the hallway.

Crowley flung open the door.

Aziraphale stood on the threshold, everything about him in perfect order; pressed white shirt, tartan bow tie, velveteen vest, a pocket watch chain which glinted in the morning—no, Crowley checked his wristwatch—afternoon sunlight. He was holding a covered casserole dish. 

The thing about Aziraphale, Crowley reflected, was that you never knew with him. One moment you thought you had the measure of him, you thought you’d realized that he wasn’t worth it and then the next moment, he showed up on your doorstep with a casserole and puppy dog eyes and an expression of earnestness Crowley had seen nowhere else in the world.

If anyone else had said something to him like Aziraphale had, _if you didn't dress like that_ —Crowley wouldn’t have spared them a second thought. He didn't know what it was about Aziraphale that made his heart stutter just to see him even after such an awful argument, that made Crowley hope another chance would be possible. He didn't know, or perhaps he did, because if it had been anyone else, they wouldn't be here now, outside Crowley's front door, eyes puffy from lack of sleep or sorrow or both, casserole in hand, desperately trying to make amends. 

And Aziraphale _really_ tried. He tried harder than anyone else Crowley had ever known and his trying itself was a reminder. He made Crowley remember that none of the things that stood between them—his own poverty growing up, Aziraphale's transparent fear, the masculine affectation Aziraphale slipped back into when threatened—were really _about_ either of them at all. It wasn’t about who they were, it was about how they were raised. Crowley had known that since he had been a teenager. 

Luke had been so sunk in his own misery, he had hardly cared what Crowley did with his time. He had hit Crowley for wearing makeup, but he hit Crowley for so many other reasons too—for being two minutes late with dinner, for forgetting to close the windows when it rained, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time—that the proximal cause hardly seemed to matter. Crowley had only ever been in Aziraphale's father's house once, but even then, he had felt the weight of unsaid words, unspoken judgement pressing down and down and down. It was as stifling as a mineshaft, but at least Crowley had been able to come up for air when his shift was over. Aziraphale had lived like that, day after day, for eighteen years. No wonder he wielded his own terror like a knife. All either of them had ever wanted was to survive a childhood in Eden. Crowley couldn't fault Aziraphale for having learned what it took to get out alive. 

"Are you going to shoot me?" Aziraphale asked quietly. 

Crowley started. He had been so wrapped up in the intense, miserable expression on Aziraphale's face that he had nearly forgotten the gun under his arm. "No." 

Aziraphale smiled weakly. "Maybe you ought to. Heaven knows I deserve it." 

Crowley leaned in the doorframe and waited. 

"I...I came to say sorry," Aziraphale said finally. 

"Could have called," Crowley muttered, knowing full well that Aziraphale had. 

"I did. Several times in fact. I understand if you don't want to see me ever again, only I— I just thought. Some things are better said in person. With food I suppose although now it seems dreadfully silly of course one casserole is not enough to make up for—" 

"What kind of casserole is it?" Crowley interrupted. 

"Green bean and french fried onion," Azirapahle grimaced. "The recipe was on the back of the green bean can. I’m still learning how to cook I—I don't really know how to make anything else." 

"A classic," Crowley nodded. "Well, better come in then."

"I—" Aziraphale started, then hesitated, thought better of whatever he was going to say and followed Crowley inside. 

"Put it on the sideboard," Crowley said, hoping he sounded cool and collected and not like he was vibrating out of his own skin. It was just that it was so _much_ , having Aziraphale here in his space. Crowley had been entertaining fantasies, for weeks now, that began with him opening the door of the house and ushering Aziraphale inside. In some of those daydreams, he took Aziraphale’s hand, pulled him down the narrow hallway to straight to the bedroom. In others, they tumbled onto the couch in the living room, or skipped the walk entirely, pressed each other eagerly against the old-fashioned enameled sink here in the kitchen. None of Crowley’s fantasies startled like this; silent, stilted, with a vast chasm of space between them. 

“Sit down,” Crowley gestured towards the bare kitchen table pushed up against one wood-paneled wall. The house didn’t have a dining room (who would Crowley ever entertain if it did?) and the living room with all its soft surfaces seemed...unwise. If he was going to have it out with Aziraphale it had better be here at the scarred table, one of its leaves folded down to save space, with the afternoon sun streaming in the high window over the sink. Even so, watching Aziraphale arrange himself meticulously into his usual straight-backed posture at Crowley’s own table felt horribly intimate. Crowley was comfortable here and had been for a long time. The linoleum floor was worn; the gingham curtains on either side of the window were threadbare. It was perhaps the most lived-in room in the entire house. Letting Aziraphale inside, even just this much, made the hairs stand up on the backs of Crowley’s arms. 

Crowley busied himself with unloading the gun so he didn’t have to look at Aziraphale. He slipped the shells back into their box in the drawer, set the gun down against the wall and came to sit across from Aziraphale. The only sounds were the scrape of the chair as Crowley pulled it out from the table, the creak as he settled into it, and then—silence, except for the bees buzzing at the herbs outside the kitchen window. Aziraphale’s eyes were downcast, his hands folded in his lap. The afternoon light illuminated the frown lines on his forehead, the bags under his eyes. 

“So what are you sorry for?” Crowley asked. 

“How I treated you last night,” Aziraphale said immediately, looking up. “And several other things too, but we can start with last night.” 

Crowley shifted, kicked his feet out in front of him, crossed his arms over his chest. “Alright.” 

Aziraphale’s eyes were very earnest and very blue. “I’m sorry for the things I said. For saying we weren’t friends. For...for what I said about how you dress, present yourself. It was so awful Crowley I— I don’t even want to repeat it.” 

Crowley said nothing, let the silence stretch. 

“I never—” Aziraphale bit his lip, looked down at the table between them. “I never wanted to hurt you. Never Crowley. I was just trying—” 

“To keep me safe, I know.” Crowley let out a breath, passed a hand over his face. He had slept most of the day away and yet still he felt a bone deep weariness, too tired to have this conversation. “I know that’s what you were trying to do, but you can’t— you _can’t_ say those kind of things to me, Aziraphale.” 

“I know,” Aziraphale said. “They were horrible things to say. I regret them so deeply.” 

“It’s not just the things you said. About not being friends, about my clothes. I can take that sort of stuff from other people. I _have_ taken it from other people. It doesn’t even bother me much, not anymore. But I—” Crowley pinched the bridge of his nose. The exhaustion had left him feeling hollowed out. He wasn’t even properly angry anymore, just numb. “—I can’t take it from you.” Even just saying it aloud was a slip-up, enough information for Aziraphale to destroy him if he wanted. “You’ve got to believe me,” he said, a touch desperate, willing Aziraphale to listen, to really hear him, “ _I can’t take it from you_.” 

Aziraphale had gone very pale. “Why am I different?” he whispered. 

Crowley couldn’t possibly begin to answer that. “Dunno,” he muttered. “You just are.” 

It hung between them for a beat, this admission. 

"Do you know Hastur didn't even go to Ligur's funeral?" Crowley said abruptly, without planning to say it. 

Aziraphale looked as though Crowley had struck him in the face. 

(Aziraphale hadn't gone to the funeral either, he hadn't gone to any of them—Crowley knew because they had been televised by the local station. He had watched from his hospital bed, looking for the telltale shock of pale blonde hair among the crowd. It had been September by the time the viewings were over and the bodies were laid in the earth. Aziraphale had likely been in his first week of classes, or that was the excuse Crowley had made for him anyway. 

Would you have gone to my funeral? Crowley had wanted to ask, but of course he knew the answer, had known it for years, with a bleak sort of certainty. Aziraphale hadn't visited him in the hospital after all.) 

"Crowley, I—" Aziraphale started, but Crowley shook his head, throat suddenly tight. 

"You said you wanted a blank slate, I— I was honest when I agreed to that. We don't need to talk about the past, Aziraphale. We need to talk about _now_. That's all that matters, right? And what I'm trying to say is—" 

Crowley looked out the window at the treetops blowing in the slight breeze so he didn't have to look at Aziraphale, leaning in, eyes earnest and wide and repentant, hanging on his every word. 

"I've thought about that—Hastur sitting at home, watching Ligur be buried on TV—for thirty years. That's where all this leads you know, all the sneaking around and avoiding misconceptions. It doesn’t make you any safer, it just makes you more alone."

"But being...clear about things, is that where it leads?" Aziraphale asked, pointing to the gun leaning against the wall. 

Crowley shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe some places around the state. But not here, not anymore. People know you long enough, they sort of forget you’re different. It’s not perfect, right? Folks go to church and hear the pastor rage against the kind of person I am, they vote for all sorts of things that are bad for people like me...and you,” Crowley glanced up at Aziraphale’s face to look for his reaction to the _you_ , but his expression hadn’t changed at all, it revealed nothing, only contrition. “People say all sorts of things, but when it really comes down to it, I’ve never had trouble. When my goats got out last year, everybody in the valley helped me get ‘em back. No one’s ever started anything with me. People are kind, here, for the most part, when it matters.” 

"But last night at the gas station—" 

“Yeah,” Crowley conceded. “It ain’t always easy. But it’s better than the alternative. You’ve got to understand, Aziraphale—” 

“Yes?” Aziraphale said, quick and breathless. 

“It wasn’t you stepping out of the truck all butch like that, near unrecognizable that got to me, it wasn’t you being friendly with Sandy. Hell, it probably saved both our asses that you knew him, that you could joke and talk with him about high school and football and shit. Nah, what kept me up all night was you saying you didn’t _know_ me. We been friends for how long, thirty years?” 

Aziraphale inhaled sharply but said nothing. 

“Thirty years, then a stranger comes along,” Crowley continued, “threatens me, and you throw all of that aside? That’s what got me. I just thought—” and this was harder to say, unfair even, because it verged on a question Crowley had not properly asked of Aziraphale, brushed up against something large and heavy and full of history. “—I thought—hoped—it was always going to be us against the world, if it came to that. Not me alone.” 

“Crowley, I—” A complicated series of emotions passed over Aziraphale’s face, each one there and then gone too quickly for Crowley to catch it, like clouds moving over a hillside in a summer storm. Aziraphale swallowed. “You’re not alone,” he said with a startling sort of intensity. “I’m terribly sorry I made you feel like you were. You’re not alone.” 

“Well,” Crowley said and then trailed off. What could he say to that? What could he say when all the air seemed to have been sucked out of the kitchen? 

Aziraphale traced a finger on the worn tabletop. His nails were very well kept; professionally manicured, if Crowley had to guess. His skin looked soft. 

"I am gay you know,” Aziraphape said quietly, “I don’t mind admitting it these days. I’m nearly fifty. It doesn’t bother me anymore. I have gay friends in DC. We go to brunch. It’s nice.” His mouth curled into a sad little smile. “It doesn't bother me, or at least, I didn’t think it did, not ‘till I came back here. It’s so much harder here. Every day I see things that make me remember what it was like growing up. It's like getting put back in a box. But we are. We are the same." 

That started a laugh out of Crowley. "We’re not actually. I'm not gay." 

A look of utter disbelief bloomed over Aziraphale's face. 

"No I mean, I'm attracted to men," Crowley let his eyes linger on the stretch of Aziraphale's neatly buttoned shirt across his chest. " _Obviously_. But women too. All kinds of people really." 

Aziraphale gaped at him. “My dear, then, why aren’t you—” 

“Married to a woman?” Crowley shrugged. “Hasn’t worked out with anyone. It’s been years since I’ve been really interested to be honest.” _Not since you_ , Crowley didn’t say. 

“But you could be…you wouldn’t have to be _different_...you could live as…” 

“I couldn’t,” Crowley said, looking down at the chipped paint of his nails. “Not really.” 

The small kitchen was silent again except for the sound of the bees industriously pollinating outside.

Aziraphale drew in an audible breath. “Crowley, look, I know I’ve no right to ask you things like this after how I behaved yesterday, but...are you a woman? Because it would be alright if you were, you know. It wouldn’t change how I feel about you at all.”

 _How do you feel about me?_ Crowley wanted to ask. “I know it would be alright,” he said instead. “You don’t have to tell me that.”

Azirahpale’s face fell. “Oh I’m terribly sorry, I’ve done it again haven’t I? I’ve gone and said something insulting, talked down to you, like you needed my permission just to be who you are—” 

“I’m not a woman,” Crowley interrupted, suddenly no longer in the mood to see Aziraphale squirm. Teasing was only fun when Aziraphale enjoyed it. Now, he looked miserable and dejected and Crowley wasn’t even mad at him anymore, couldn’t be, seeing him like this. Never could. “But I’m not—look, it’s not something I’ve really put words to much—I don’t feel like a man either, I’m just me.”

“Do you want me to….change anything? About how I talk to you? Talk about you?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley shook his head slowly. “Don’t think so,” he muttered. He hadn’t expected to talk about this today. He hadn’t told anyone before, not in so many words anyway. It was like letting out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. Stupidly, he found himself wanting some sort of reassurance, wanting Aziraphale to tell him it was ok, which was ridiculous. He knew it was ok.

But, he supposed, it would be better to pull the band aid off quickly, wouldn’t it? Let Aziraphale send him on his way if he was going to, give Crowley the space to lick his wounds in private, rather than limping along like this on half-said things, never knowing if saying them fully would drive him away.

“This is me,” Crowley said, sliding off his sunglasses with a hand that only just barely shook. He had been avoiding taking them off in Aziraphale’s presence, but he didn’t want to any longer. This conversation had made him impatient. He wanted Aziraphale to know him, to know the truth of him, and then make a decision if he still wanted any part of Crowley’s life. “I’ve lived in West Virginia all my life, I don’t have a college degree, I’m queer, I wear women’s clothes most of the time and don’t really think of myself as any gender really, and when I dress nice I usually pair it with make up. When I was eighteen, a mining accident blew off half my face. This is what I look like now. This is...this is _it_ , Aziraphale. I don’t have any secrets, I’m not going to hide anything. It’s who I am and I can’t pretend I’m anything else. I guess you can,” Crowley drew in a shaky breath, twisted the folded sunglasses in his hands. “I guess you can take it….or leave it. But you can’t change it.” 

“May I…” Aziraphale asked and reached out one trembling hand. Every fiber of Crowley’s body was singing out to him to flinch away. 

“You don’t...you don’t have to—” 

“I know,” Aziraphale said, soft, patient, hand hovering between them. “I want to.” 

“Alright,” Crowley muttered, forcing himself to lean in. 

Aziraphale laid his palm on the scarred skin of Crowley’s face. All the nerve endings in that part of Crowley’s body were long gone. He couldn’t tell if Aziraphale’s hand was warm, he couldn’t tell if it was soft; he felt only gentle pressure. He breathed in, breathed out. Aziraphale’s hand was steady against his face. _It’s alright_ , Crowley thought, and amazingly, it was. It was alright to grant Aziraphale, who had not kissed him in thirty years, this intimacy which he had denied to even the most curious of his former lovers. It was more than alright. Crowley wanted it even. At this thought, abruptly, it became too much to meet Aziraphale’s gaze. Crowley closed his right eye, and then in the sudden, sickening surge of bravery afforded by the darkness, turned his head to lean into the pressure of Aziraphale’s palm. It held steady against his scarred cheek for another breath and then Aziraphale said, in a choked sort of whisper, “I’m sorry I never visited you in the hospital. That was—that is—the other thing I came here to apologize for.” 

Crowley’s eyelid fluttered back open in shock. _A blank slate_ , Aziraphale had said that very first day, and Crowley had agreed. They had shaken on it. Aziraphale had just broken the rules. 

Aziraphale was looking back at him, just the hint of tears pricking at the corners of his earnest blue eyes. Crowely had expected to find pity there in his gaze, he had closed his eye so he didn’t have to see it. Instead he found guilt. 

“Not your fault,” Crowley muttered roughly. As he spoke, the muscles of his face shifted, the corner of his mouth, still full of sensation, unmarred by the fall or the explosion, brushed against the skin of Aziraphale’s palm. Aziraphale’s hand _was_ warm, after all, and soft. “You had to start college.” 

“Still, I—” Aziraphale was the one to look away, breaking Crowley’s gaze, eyelids fluttering down as he looked at the tabletop. “I want you to know, I can’t make up for the past, but I’m trying—trying to make amends, to be braver. To, to, not care what anyone else thinks, to be who I am, authentically I mean.” Aziraphale’s eyes flicked up again, met Crowley’s gaze with unexpected force. “I want to be that person. For myself, for—for you. But it’s so very difficult. And it’s taken me so long to get just to this place, to be able to say that I’m attracted to men, to...to sit here, with you, like this. And it’s so much harder, here, in Eden, with all the memories, than it was in DC. I—I’m not making excuses Crowley, please understand. I’m just trying to tell you. It might take me longer to get to where you are, but it doesn’t mean I’m not trying. I’m changing, but slowly. I know it’s not fair to ask this of you, but, will you, will you be willing to wait?” 

Aziraphale stared at him, blue eyes wide and soft and all of Crowley’s resistance melted. “Yes,” he said roughly, and then before he could think twice about it, he reached to cover Aziraphale’s hand on his face with his own, pulled the palm down to his lips and kissed it. “I can wait.” 

Crowley released Aziraphale's wrist and his hand fluttered to the table between them like a leaf on the breeze. 

“Well,” Aziraphale cleared his throat, eyes suspiciously bright. “I’m not usually one for superstition, but the solstice does seem like a good time for new beginnings, doesn’t it?” 

“Solstice?” Crowley asked blankly, mind still fixated on the smooth, warm skin of Aziraphale’s palm against his lips. 

“Oh, isn’t today the 21st?” 

“Is it?” Crowley pulled out his phone, scrolled past the many missed texts and calls to open his calendar app. “Oh shit, it _is_.” 

Aziraphale frowned. “Is something the matter?” 

“No, well, yes…sort of,” Crowley jumped up from the table, pushed, the sunglasses back on his face, suddenly full of nervous restless energy. “You might not be superstitious, but I absolutely am, and ever since I started growing apple seedlings, I’ve always removed the graft tape on the solstice. It’s ridiculous, but I think it’s good luck. Look, I don’t mean to kick you out, but it’s already late and I’ve got a lot of trees. I’d better get down to the greenhouse right away.” 

“Can I...can I help?” Aziraphale asked, standing too. 

Crowley gaped at him. “It’s going to take a while. It will be dusk before the trees are all done.” 

“I’ve got no other plans for the day,” Aziraphale said mildly. 

“What about your nice clothes,” Crowley gestured, “won’t they get all dirty?” 

“Nothing I can’t wash out I imagine.” Aziraphale smoothed his hands down his vest. Crowley’s eyes tracked the movement. The fabric was pulled tight across Aziraphale’s belly. It looked soft. The vest, but his body too. The kind of body Crowley could imagine snuggling up to, solid and comfortable. 

“Crowley, _please_ ,” Aziraphale said. A hint of tremulousness shook his voice. Crowley drew his eyes back up to his face. An emotion hovered just under the surface there, something bittersweet and hopeful. Crowley understood, then, what Aziraphale wanted and it was not to spend hours bent over small saplings in a greenhouse on the longest day of the year—although he would, of course, do that too without complaint. _You’re not alone_ , Aziraphale had said. What he wanted was permission to show Crowley it was true. 

“Yeah,” Crowley said, mouth dry. “You can help. ‘Course you can help.”

It was like a lightswitch had been flipped; Aziraphale beamed at him. Crowley’s stomach turned over, his breath caught in his throat. 

“Come on,” he said, and opened the door into the golden afternoon. 

***

In the familiar warmth of the greenhouse amid the sweet humid smell of growing things, with his hands occupied by a familiar task, Crowley felt a complicated process beginning in his chest. Some sort of unclenching of muscles he hadn’t known were tight, the unfurling of feeling he didn’t yet dare examine closely. Aziraphale watched carefully without words as Crowley showed him how to unwrap the white waxy tape from around the join of the rootstock to the bud, how to examine the graft to see if it had taken. 

Aziraphale had asked him to wait. It wasn’t a dismissal, it wasn’t a denial. It was the beginning of an answer to the open question of thirty years, movement towards a resolution. A small but very significant shift. And Aziraphale had apologized, not only for what had happened last night, but also for something that had happened thirty years in the past. Crowley had thought they would never address that August long ago; he had made his peace with Aziraphale’s silence. Now it felt as though he had missed a step on the stairs. It was shocking, but not entirely unpleasant, a heady sort of surprised anticipation. 

They moved together down the row of small trees without talking. Crowley glanced over at Aziraphale's hands as they worked. They were as gentle with the saplings as they had been on his face. 

Oddly enough, Aziraphale did not look out of place here in the orchard. He looked eccentric, yes, but in the way of a Victorian gentleman farmer, puttering about the garden in his waistcoat and bow tie and nice leather shoes that were just dusted at the tips with the dirt. Crowley watched him as he bent over the top of a sapling pulling at the tape with fingers that Crowley now knew were as soft as they looked. Aziraphale's face bloomed in delight when the wrap came away and the tree beneath was whole. He moved down the line of little trees and completed the process again and again, joy undiminished by repetition. 

Crowley _wanted_ , a jumbled and incongruous mess of desires; to fix forever in his mind the image of the evening sun gilding the soft ends of Aziraphale's hair like a halo, to go to his knees right there in the greenhouse and press his face against the front of Aziraphale's neatly pleated slacks, to tangle his hands with Aziraphale's in the soil and ask him to stay. But Aziraphale had asked him to _wait_ , and so he would. 

Instead Crowley simply watched Aziraphale's careful fingers unwrap the slim trunk of another sapling. This was enough, Crowley thought, just this, standing here in a garden, having come out the other side of anger and hurt, like going outside to stand on the steaming asphalt after a summer rainstorm. Crowley would wait, as long as he had to. Aziraphale was worth it. 

Without looking up from his hands, Aziraphale spoke. "Gabe offered me a job. Came by a few weeks ago and mentioned it. I didn't know if he was serious, but he sent me a formal offer, by mail too." 

“Really?” A complicated mess of emotion swelled in Crowley’s chest, nearly shattering the fragile peaceful air. "What's the job?" 

“A company historian I believe,” Aziraphale shot him an entirely inscrutable glance from under lowered lashes. Was he looking for approval? “They’re setting up a small museum in Morgantown. Eden County mining through the ages, something like that. They need someone to run it and I guess...I guess Gabe thought of me.”

“You do have the experience,” Crowley said, “you know everything there is to know about antiques.” 

“Well,” Aziraphale bent to another tree. “Not everything, certainly. But I’ve been in salvage for so long, I do suppose I’ve become a bit of an amatuer historian. I like to look up properties before I start working on restoration, learn a bit about what they were like through the ages. You know, I worked on an old hotel in Richmond that I’m convinced was haunted…” 

Crowley let him talk, an offhand change in subject that Crowley was sure was deliberate. This was what Crowley had wanted, wasn’t it? For Aziraphale to find a job in West Virginia. For Aziraphale to stay. Only, he hadn’t ever imagined the job might be back at Wright Mines. Crowley looked past Aziraphale out the wavy glass of the greenhouse at the gentle slope of Eden Mountain rising in the distance, ending abruptly at a flat, treeless top. He didn’t know how to feel about Aziraphale working in coal again, however obliquely. He had wished for Aziraphale to stay, but he had entertained only vague visions of how; relocating his renovation business to West Virginia (probably expensive, getting all sorts of new permits, moving his workshop), reopening Agnes’ shop (it wouldn’t make money, never had, never would), taking up apple farming here with—- (Crowley cut that thought off before it could properly form). Of course, it would make sense to go back to the family business. But the thought hadn’t even crossed Crowley’s mind. 

“...and then, scorned by her lover, abandoned by her friends, she checked into room 113 and never checked out. The contractor I was working with didn’t believe in ghosts before that job but then he was working to replace the wiring in the same room and...Crowley are you even listening?” 

Crowley blinked. “Are you going to take it?” 

“What?” 

“The job Gabriel offered you. Are you going to take it.” 

“Oh,” a shadow crossed Aziraphale’s face and Crowley understood in a split second of relief that Aziraphale felt the same aversion to Wright Mines as he did. “I don’t know,” Aziraphale said. “Should I?” 

Crowley gaped at him. “You—you can’t ask me that.” 

“I like doing the kind of salvage work I do, antique restoration, but I could do that anywhere. I _am_ doing it, here in the bookshop. I like where I live near DC, but I have to admit, I rather missed Eden. The countryside, the small town, the mountain. I never really thought about coming back here, but I’m thinking about it,” Aziraphale said in a small sort of voice. “I’m thinking about it now. I want to know what you think I should do.” 

“I can’t tell you that.” 

“You can’t?” Aziraphale asked quietly, folding his hands together in front of him. “Not ever?” 

Crowley looked at Aziraphale’s fingers, laced together in front of the worn velvet of his waistcoat and felt a great, overwhelming surge of affection. It wasn’t just desire—it was familiarity, protectiveness, respect, and alright, yes, also more than a bit of attraction. Thirty years ago, Crowley would have thrown himself to the ground and begged Aziraphale to stay, whatever the cost. Now, an older and only slightly wiser version of Crowley, looking at Aziraphale’s hands, dusty with Eden County soil, understood that some things couldn’t be pressured or hastened. Some decisions were an iterative process. If you tried to make them all at once, everything would shatter. And anyway, the whole summer was still ahead of them; it was the longest day of the year. There was no need to rush. “Not yet,” Crowley breathed. “I can’t tell you what I think you should do. Not yet.” 

***

They worked on the apple grafts until darkness had nearly fallen. Nearly all of the saplings had survived, one of Crowley’s best years on record. Crowely felt pleased, buoyant, nearly light as air as they made their way up the familiar path through the meadow back to the house. If someone had told him when he woke this morning that this is how the day would end, he wouldn’t have believed it. He had imagined weeks of misery. He hadn’t been prepared for Aziraphale’s thorough apology, for his own unexpected willingness to forgive him, for the fragile, tender, invisible thing that had arisen between them again. In a distant sort of way, Crowley knew that he might have dodged misery today, but it would only hurt more, later on when it all fell apart. In forgiving Aziraphale today he had most likely missed the last exit off of a highway towards ruin, but as they walked together through the high, fragrant grasses he found he couldn’t care. 

It was that wonderful, crystal clear time of evening. The sky was a luminous, fading blue; an otherworldly, glorious dusk. Fireflies rose all around them, insects chirped in the dark trees on the horizon and the air was the perfect temperature, heat rising from the ground only to dissipate in the cool breeze off the back of the mountain. 

Inside the house, Aziraphale washed his hands at Crowley’s enameled kitchen sink, scrubbing beneath his nails with the harsh hand soap Crowley favored after outdoor work. 

Crowley watched him from behind. The pull of Aziraphale’s trousers over the swell of his backside, the muscles moving under his shirt as he lathered his hands, were beautiful in the same luminous way as the sky and grasses. Desire stirred, but in a distant, far off way, subsumed and quieted in the crystal clear perfection of the evening. Everywhere around them life exhaled into the dusk—the trees, the insects, the frogs in the pond. Crowley felt himself exhale too and draw closer to Aziraphale to stand next to him at the side board, fingers playing with the foil top of the casserole tin. 

“You really didn’t have to cook for me,” Crowley murmured. 

“Oh but I did,” Aziraphale said, shutting off the water and drying his hands on the gingham dish towel below the sink. He shot Crowley a quick, cautious smile. “It’s not a proper apology without food. Only, the thing is, I really can’t cook very well yet, so I don’t know how it’s turned out.”

Crowley pulled back the foil on one corner and nearly laughed. The casserole looked decidedly overdone on one side, which was quite a feat. This kind of cooking was terribly hard to burn. Crowley knew he would eat it anyway.

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said softly, into the small, rapidly shrinking, pocket of air between them.

“For what?” Crowley asked, equally softly, leaning in. 

“For listening, for letting me apologize. I’ve never deserved you.” 

“Nonsense,” Crowley muttered, looking at the swell of Aziraphale’s lower lip. 

“You were very beautiful yesterday,” Aziraphale said softly. “I thought so when I first got in the truck. I thought so all day. I should have told you.” 

Crowley said nothing. Perhaps this would be how it would happen, in the fading light on the longest day of the year, standing on the worn linoleum of Crowley’s kitchen. There could be worse ways, Crowley thought, as he tilted his head in invitation, watched Aziraphale’s pink tongue dart out to wet his lips. It had a symmetry to it, after all. They had kissed once in a kitchen, not entirely unlike this one. Aziraphale stepped closer, Crowley parted his mouth, let out an involuntary sort of sigh—then Aziraphale was brushing past him, hands fluttering at his waistcoat, drawing out the pocket watch. 

“Oh dear me, look at the time,” Aziraphale said. “I really ought...I’m sorry Crowley I really ought to go. It’s been so lovely.” 

Crowley blinked at the empty space of air where Aziraphale had been standing, then found himself nodding, although he did not quite understand what had happened. 

“Yeah,” he said, following Aziraphale out onto the stone path. “Yeah, ‘course….but...is everything alright?” 

“Oh yes,” Aziraphale said, practically fleeing to his car. “Absolutely hunky dory!” 

Crowley stared after his car as it disappeared down the long drive. “Hunky dory?” he repeated incredulously, although only the trees and grasses could hear. Aziraphale had always been flighty. Easily spooked, like a startled horse. It was not...entirely unexpected for him to run away. Crowley didn’t mind. He had said he would wait, and he would. _Hunky dory though, really?_

He walked back through the house, quiet now in the summer dusk, without Aziraphale’s presence. He picked up his phone from the kitchen table, a packet of cigarettes from his dresser in the bedroom and went out to the tar papered porch overlooking the pond to smoke and watch the last glimmer of light fall on the water below. 

There were four new voicemails on Crowley’s phone. He put the phone on speaker, then pressed play. 

_Hello Crowley, it’s Aziraphale, I’m just calling because well, I’m really terribly sorry about last night—_

The hot anger from this morning had faded completely, but in its place there was still a hollow, sick sort of sadness that would take a while to scab over. Crowley didn’t want to think about last night anymore; he wanted it utterly behind them. He deleted the message. 

The next two were also Aziraphale. Crowley deleted them without listening to them. The last voicemail, however, was someone else entirely. The number wasn’t saved in Crowley’s phone. A female voice spoke, flat and harsh, unlike the soft country accent that had started to creep back into Aziraphale’s tones after a month in West Virginia. 

_Hi I’m trying to reach Anthony Crowley. My name is Anathema Device, I’m a reporter with the New York Times. I’m writing a piece on coal mining in Eden County and I was hoping to interview you. If you could give me a call back at—_

Crowley had no desire to be interviewed by anyone, but curiosity had always gotten the best of him. He dialed the number. Anathema answered after the first ring. 

“Mr. Crowley, I presume. You’re a hard man to reach.” 

Crowley grunted and didn’t say anything else. 

“I had to get your number from the US Apple Association, do you know that.” 

“Thought my number was unlisted,” Crowley muttered. “Anyway, what’s this about? An article?” 

“Yes, I’m writing about coal mining in Eden County, I got the idea after I wrote the obituary for a truly fascinating woman, Agnes Nutter, she lived in the bookshop downtown, not sure if you knew her—” 

“Mm,” Crowley said. Let Anathema take that as she would. “Didn’t much care for the obituary.” 

The silence on the other end of the phone sounded strained. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Anathema said. 

“The one in the high school newspaper was better. I don’t know if you’ve been in town long, but there’s a girl who works in the diner—Pepper—she wrote it. You could take some tips from her.” 

“I always enjoy meeting with aspiring young journalists,” Anathema said, a hint of ice in her voice. 

“Anyway,” Crowley looked up at the sky where the first few stars were emerging. “Why’d you want to interview me?” he asked, but he knew. Of course he knew. Anathema knew he knew. He wanted to make her say it, though. 

“There was an accident in 1985, the worst single day loss of life ever in an Eden County mine. I’ve read all the old newspaper coverage of what happened and your name comes up over and over in those articles. I want to hear about it from someone who was there. I want to hear what you remember.” 

Crowley blew out a breath. “What’s the point?” 

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” 

“What’s the point of this thing you’re writing?” 

“Well,” Anathema hesitated. “I can’t say too much on the phone, but the goal is to make a bit of a splash.” 

“What kind of a splash?” Crowley asked. 

There was a pause, longer this time. “The kind that could drown Wright Mines for good.” 

Crowley said nothing. The sun continued to lower over the horizon, the silence stretched. 

“So,” Anathema said eventually. “Can I put you down for an interview?” 

“I’ll think about it,” Crowley said.

“When should we touch base—” 

“Don’t call me. I’ll call you if I want to.” 

“Ok, Mr. Crowley, and thank you for taking the time, it’s been a real pleasure to—” 

Crowley hung up the phone before she finished speaking. 

It was the end of the longest day of the year. Night lowered slowly over the green farm on the mountainside. The breeze blew up from the base of the hill, fragrant with honeysuckle and the smell of the fresh new leaves of apple seedlings. Crowley stood on the porch for a long while, deep in thought, as the sun dipped below the level horizon of Eden mountain.

Visions of the future returned, inflected with the conversation of the day. Aziraphale, standing in Crowley’s bedroom, doing up his bowtie in the mirror propped above Crowley’s dresser. Aziraphale, pink-faced, fresh from a morning fuck, headed off to his job at the Wright Mining Corporation museum in Morgantown. Aziraphale handing Crowley a coffee, brushing a kiss over his lips, asking Crowley what was going to be for dinner that evening. A year from now, ten years from now, twenty, shoulder to shoulder in the greenhouse removing the waxy tape from new growth, pausing in between preparing the grafts to kiss there, in the presence of green, flourishing things. Crowley’s teeth ached with it, this imagined future, where everything was golden, soft around the edges like the sunlight in Aziraphale’s hair. 

But even as such a future unspooled before him, Crowley was arrested by a memory, one he did not think of often but which had informed every moment of his life since he was eighteen; the cool slide of coal beneath his hand like snake scales, darkness and pain and the boiling hot air of the respirator, and a promise— _I won’t hurt you. Let me out and I’ll never again lift a hand against you._

In the distance, the last line of sunlight gilding the unnatural flat top of Eden Mountain disappeared slowly into grey darkness. Crowley tapped his fingers on the back of his phone, and lit another cigarette. The shadowy bulk of the mountain watched over him, watched over the small farm on the hillside, over Aziraphale settling into the easy chair in a bookshop he had just begun to call home, over Gabriel too, on his way back to his modern mansion in Morgantown and Hastur still puttering around in the same mobile home he had lived in all those years ago, over the whole of Eden Valley, over the lovers and liars, the false and the fair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit where it is due, I would like to thank [ Darcy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darcylindbergh%E2%80%9Drel=) for suggesting “hunky dory” as a pitch perfect American equivalent to “Tickety-boo.” 
> 
> The next update will be a few weeks from now, but it will actually be _two_ chapters, one posted on a Friday and the other posted on a Sunday. They are both on the shorter end and they go together. I believe this will be the first of several “double update” weeks, as we are moving into a part of the story where the flashback chapters get shorter and are directly related to present-day chapters. 
> 
> Thanks as always for reading and feel free to leave me a comment or get in touch on Tumblr!


	11. August, 1985: Aziraphale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s going to be a busy weekend for this story! 
> 
> The chapter below is quite short--just a brief interlude, a moment in time that jumps forward a bit from the flashbacks we have already seen. Because it’s so short and because it’s a bit angsty, I am going to update again on Sunday with another longer chapter. This chapter stands alone, but if you would like to wait, you can also read it on Sunday and continue straight on to the next one! 
> 
> Thanks again to [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for the insightful beta read. 
> 
> CW: internalized homophobia, reference to unhealthy drinking

The bulk of the mountain loomed above them, coal black against the dark night sky. 

"That there is the summer triangle," Crowley said, his long arm a shadow in front of the heavens. “Vega,” he pointed to a bright star high in the sky. “Altair. And then we’ll have to wait a bit for Deneb to rise over the mountain.” 

“Hmm,” Aziraphale shifted closer on the warm, fragrant grass. They were less careful, these days, than they ought to be. But it also seemed, as the night sky glittered above the football field where they lay, that the conclusion of a childhood in Eden was so close that caution hardly mattered anymore. Crowley had packed his bags weeks ago, Aziraphale had packed his today. The breeze that blew off the mountain was full with the spicy promise of fall, freedom on the horizon. “I imagine the stars will be easier to see in the desert.” 

“Probably,” Crowley agreed. “I’ll miss her though.” 

“What?” They were so close that Aziraphale could smell his peppermint shampoo. It filled him with an aching sort of sadness, diffuse and unspeakable. 

“The mountain. She’s always there, watching over us. When I’m in Colorado I’ll miss her.” 

_The only thing you'll miss?_ Aziraphale wanted to ask. Instead, he leaned closer still and inhaled again, that bracing scent of peppermint, layered over a hint of stolen cigarettes and sweat. _I’ll never be able to drink peppermint tea again_ , Aziraphale thought, _I’ll never be able to chew peppermint gum. I won’t be able to taste it without thinking of him._

Crowley turned to him in the darkness, his features shrouded in shadow. 

“I’ve been thinking a lot,” Crowley said, a whisper. Soft, but not soft enough that Aziraphale couldn’t feel the warm rush of breath against his face. “About the mountain, about other things too...” 

The words hung in the air. 

“What about the mountain?” Aziraphale asked, because he had always been a coward. 

“That you were wrong, last October.” 

“Last October? What did I say last October?” 

“That we don’t have mothers.” 

“Well, of course, I know it’s different what happened to your—”

“—No, I mean,” Crowley’s hand moved again in a long arc across the clear night sky pointing up at the dark outline of Eden Mountain rising above them. “We have the same mother. Our mother the mountain. She’s always been here, all our lives.”

“Oh, be serious, Crowley!” Aziraphale laughed, shoved playfully at the hard muscle of Crowley’s chest, which didn’t give an inch under his palms. His hands stayed there, up against Crowley’s chest, dropped lower to wander over the outline of his ribs. _Is this the last time?_ Aziraphale wondered. _The second from last time? The thirtieth from last time? When I touch him for the last time, will I know it?_

“I am serious,” Crowley said, catching at Aziraphale’s hands, stilling them against his sides. “I am, I mean it. When you’re on a hillside in the summer when all the wildflowers are blooming, or in the fall when you walk through the woods and the Pawpaw trees are all heavy with fruit, don’t you ever feel like someone’s watching over you? Like she’s watching over you? Making sure you’ll be alright. Maybe it’s different for you. You grew up in the middle of a grass lawn.” 

“You don’t go to church, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, feeling a bit off balance. “You don’t believe in God.” 

“That’s the best bit though,” Crowley said. “A mountain isn’t God. She’s just solid rock. Don’t have to believe her for her to be there.” 

(A week later, Aziraphale would remember this conversation and would try to pray to her. He would go to his knees, even, on the worn wood floor of the Administration building when Gabriel was out calling on the families and Uriel was nowhere to be seen. He would stay like that, crouched on the floor as the helicopter fluttered outside for perhaps five minutes, before giving it up, standing and dusting off his knees. Crowley had been right. The mountain was just a mountain. You couldn’t plead with solid rock. You couldn’t ask it for forgiveness. 

Or maybe you could—Crowley had, after all, walked out all on his own.) 

In that moment on the football field, Aziraphale didn’t know how to take this strange declaration, but with the hint of autumn wafting over on the breeze from the woods beyond the field, it almost seemed possible. Crowley’s eyes were earnest in the gloom. The moment stretched between them, broke. Aziraphale took his hands off of Crowley’s sides and rolled away. 

"You can't say such queer things at the Air Force," Aziraphale said laughing, trying to lighten the strange heaviness that had settled between them. 

But Crowley was not laughing. He had gone silent next to Aziraphale in the grass.

"So what if I do?” he said quietly, then quieter still, “so what if I am?" 

"So what if you’re—-? But, Crowley, you're not."

Crowley fixed Aziraphale with his golden gaze and did not respond. His eyes were beautiful and sad.

"You're not," Aziraphale said; softer, pleading. One of Crowley's hands had reached out across the distance between them. The backs of his knuckles brushed, ever so gently, against Aziraphale's sternum.

 _Oh_ , Aziraphale realized with a sudden surge of grief. _I will know. This is it. This is the last time he touches me._

(It wouldn’t be. But to Aziraphale, who had never believed in second chances—not at eighteen and not at forty eight—the gentle caress of Crowley’s fingers evoked a firm finality.) 

"We can't," Aziraphale said weakly. “We can’t keep on like this, you know that better than anyone.”

“Do I? Why not?"

"The Air Force will throw you out."

"They don't have to know," Crowley's fingers were still stroking gently, maddeningly against Aziraphale's chest. 

"My father won’t pay for college if he finds out."

"He doesn't have to know either,” Crowley’s fingers slid down, tangled in Aziraphale’s belt. 

"We can't Crowley. We're going to be on opposite sides of the country, it's impossible."

Crowley made a noise low in his throat. “Not impossible. We’re going to be out of Eden. We’re going to be free. We could write to each other, see each other over the holidays, and four years from now—” 

“Four years from now we could….what?” Aziraphale said, irritated at Crowley’s insistence on something that could never, ever be, no matter how much they might want it. “Live together? Put up a nice white picket fence?” 

"Why not? Look, I’d still be in the military, for another couple years at least, but there’s Air Force bases all over the world. And once you have an engineering degree, you can work nearly anywhere.”

“What exactly are you suggesting?” 

“We could, I don’t know—” Crowley tried to pull Aziraphale closer by his belt loops. “We could go off together I guess.” 

“Oh, be serious,” Aziraphale muttered, for the second time that night, even as his heart gave a great leap in his chest. 

“I am serious. Why not? Why not go off together?” 

Aziraphale reached down to disentangle Crowley’s fingers from his waist. "Because it's not part of the plan, Crowley. You're going to be a fighter pilot and get out of here. I'm going to be an engineer, come back, help Gabriel run the company. Where does—where does any of this fit into the plan? It's not on the inside front cover of your notebook, you can't check it off."

Crowley had gone very still next to him. "For the record, fuck the plan."

“You don’t mean that,” Aziraphale pleaded. “You’re being ridiculous.” 

“ _I’m_ ridiculous? No, _this_ is ridiculous, _you’re_ ridiculous. You like me. You like being with me. Why are you so insistent on making yourself miserable?” 

"Crowley, I…" Aziraphale could hardly speak. His voice was thick, it broke on the next sentence he tried to force out of his throat. "You must understand, it's just not possible to continue once we leave here. I’m sorry, I thought….I thought you knew that. I thought you knew it was only just for this year.” 

“I didn’t,” Crowley said, clipped and cold. “Know that.” 

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said again. 

(He would think about this moment, this final apology, again and again in the years that followed. Did it extend, he would wonder, to what came afterwards? To an explosion, a fall, the darkness of a buried mine shaft, the darkness behind a blinded eye, a future forever altered, thirty years of silence?

He would think of all the things he could have said instead. They would keep him up at night alongside the slow whoop of the helicopter blades, first in his dorm room at the University of Maryland and then later in the small, bare studio apartment in DC. The unsaid words would echo until he discovered the trick of drowning them in alcohol and noise and the heat of another willing body.)

"I'm sorry too," Crowley pushed himself up with one hand out of the grass, jerky movements like stop motion animation. “Guess you won’t mind, then, if we end our arrangement a few days early. Have _fun_ working out that last problem set all on your own.” 

Aziraphale sat up on his elbows, “Crowley wait—” 

But Crowley was already walking away, long angry strides, silhouetted against the distant yellow lights of the high school parking lot. “Have a nice life,” he called back venomously, waving one arm, and then was gone. 

Aziraphale waited in the grass for a long time. Crowley didn’t come back. The night was warm, but the stars glittered above him distant and cold. The third star in the Summer Triangle—Deneb, evidently—had risen properly by now, looked down on Aziraphale with an accusing glare. What else could he have said; he had only spoken the truth. Nevertheless, he hugged his arms around himself, felt horrifyingly like he might be about to cry. 

Crowley would take a few days to cool off, and then he would be back, Aziraphale reassured himself. He would realize that Aziraphale was right, that his idea was laughably impossible, and they would part ways as friends. There would be no misunderstanding about what they meant to one another, about what they could ever be together. 

(They would not speak to one another again, not for thirty years, not until the meddling interference of Agnes Nutter's rolodex, falling open to a solitary note card— _repairs_.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, this was the bandstand scene. No, it is not the last time this scene will come up in this story. 
> 
> I’m sorry to leave it on such a sad note, but I hope the chapter on Sunday will be a satisfying balm!


	12. The Fish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been excited to share this chapter since I started posting this story. It only took us...checks calendar….nearly five months to get here? If I say anymore, I’ll give away spoilers, so I’d better just let you get to the chapter! 
> 
> Thanks once again to the inestimable [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for her encouragement and shrewd observations about pacing and sentence structure. 
> 
> CW: this chapter includes a graphic depiction of a fish dying. I’ve set it off with a special section mark (+++) so that you can skip this section if you want. Just stop reading when you see the mark and start reading when you see the same mark reappear. If you want to skip it, there’s a summary of what happens in the end notes to catch you up.

The dawn spread over the sky in the colors of a fading bruise. Aziraphale watched the sunrise from the fire escape that doubled as a back porch, hands clutched around his mug of coffee. He felt fragile, washed out by another night of bad sleep, the helicopter hovering perpetually in the corners of his dreams, strung tight between the unanswered question of Gabriel’s letter lying open on the kitchen table and the impossible promise Crowley had made— _I’ll wait._ (You wouldn’t if you knew). 

It was a Sunday. There would be no Crowley at the shop today. Aziraphale did not know if this absence was a reprieve or a disappointment. 

Downstairs, Aziraphale tried to organize a shelf of books in the back room, but it was no use. He felt distracted, unmoored. He kept remembering the way Crowley’s long fingers had played with the foil at the edge of the casserole tin, how Crowley had tilted his head to the side there in the evening light as if expecting Aziraphale to lean in and—

Aziraphale pulled a book off the shelf at random and flipped it open. The section he was sorting through was eclectic in a distinctively Agnes sort of way; a mix of outdoor sporting guides and books on witchcraft. Aziraphale was arrested by the image on the page in front of him—a man falling from a tower perched high on a mountain, flames rising all around him, lightning striking the tower above him.

_THE TOWER, Aziraphale read, Represents a moment of rupture, great change, upheaval, or disaster in the past, present or future. While this card is often misinterpreted as a negative sign, a skilled reader knows that it is not necessarily an ill omen. THE TOWER represents, first and foremost, a moment of radical change, whether it be external, such as a singular life-altering event—_

Aziraphale shut the book with a snap. The dust jacket read _Tarot for Beginners_ in gold letters on a blue background. 

“Well, that’s enough of that,” Aziraphale said out loud to the empty room. 

The pinky ring glinted dully on his finger in the soft morning light as he placed the tarot book on the “to sell” stack beside him and reached for another book on the high shelf. 

This one was titled _Trout Streams of West Virginia_. A much safer choice of light reading than a tarot guide. Aziraphale let the book fall open in his hand: 

_Bethlehem Creek: Nestled at the base of Eden Mountain, this unassuming waterway is a paradise for the intrepid angler. Although in recent years, this small river, like many in the region has been impacted by aggressive mining practices causing excessive silt build-up in the streambed, it still holds a large population of native brown trout as well as stocked rainbows. Due to its remote location and often overgrown banks this excellent native trout stream is frequently overlooked. But make no mistake —it is well worth the trip. For directions to the parking area, see the map in Appendix E on page 304._

Aziraphale stood frozen, rooted to the floor of the shop. He didn’t need directions. Over the aeons, Bethlehem Creek had carved out a narrow, steep sided valley. For the past twenty or so years, a blink of an eye in geological time, an apple orchard planted there on the hillside had grown and flourished, nourished by the water rushing below. 

“Very well,” Aziraphale said, shutting the book and putting it back on the shelf. A light breeze blew through the shop, ruffling Aziraphale’s hair although no windows were open. He wondered briefly if he was so sleep deprived he was starting to imagine things. But there was no other living creature here in the shop to judge him for talking to ghosts. And on the off chance that Agnes had stuck around to help, it wouldn’t hurt to be polite. 

“I suppose it is a nice day for fishing,” he said to the empty room. “Thank you for the suggestion.” 

***

Tramping through brambles and muck, sweating inside his new pair of waders as he forged against the current upstream, Aziraphale felt the restless energy of the morning evaporate like mist dissipating in the sun. The burn of light exertion as he waded through the deep riffles, the peaceful sounds of the woods all around, the water cool on his legs even through the thick fabric of the waders, was just what he needed. He felt as though the stream was washing away yesterday, washing away the past month in Eden; sweeping him clean of the confused jumble of emotions and worries, until he was empty save for the sound of rushing water, the gentle, repetitive tension of the fly line drifting on the current. 

Birds sang in the treetops. Their lilting melodies were familiar, half-remembered from a childhood long ago, from summer days spent in a ruined church on another hillside not so far from here. He recognized their voices, but did not know what they were saying to one another. A red winged blackbird, perched precariously in the swaying grasses, took flight as Aziraphale passed by, dipped and wheeled in the sky. 

_He's got a blood red spot on his wing, And all the rest of him's black as coal._ Aziraphale sang under his breath, as he took another cast, let the fly—a delicate mayfly imitation—swing on the current into the center of the river, then flicked the line to mend it upstream. 

By afternoon, clouds had rolled in at the edge of the horizon and the air felt heavy. The weatherman on the radio had predicted a storm in the evening, but for now the sky above Aziraphale was still clear, the birds still singing, the insects buzzing. Aziraphale sat on the bank and took a peanut butter sandwich out of the front pocket of his waders, unwrapped it, and ate it slowly. Took out a second one and ate that, too, savoring the sun on his back, the busy noise of the life in the woods all around him.

A butterfly flitted over and perched on the mud next to Aziraphale, scooping up minerals from the soil with its long tongue. He watched the flutter of its black and yellow wings and the thought arose, unbidden, of the press of Crowley’s lips against his palm, soft but sure. Aziraphale moved the toe of his boot nearer until the butterfly startled, took flight, dipping low over the flowing water. 

The walk back downstream to the car took longer than Aziraphale expected. He paused every few yards to cast, let the fly drift, slowly strip it back in. A few times there was a nudge, a gentle bump on the end of the line, but no strikes. He didn’t expect any. These fish were fast, flighty, wild creatures, rightly suspicious of any intruder. They were far more skittish than the lazy, curious bluegills in Crowley’s pond. Crowley’s pond which certainly must, like all the other farm ponds glinting high on the hillside, drain down to this creek, swell the waters as they tumbled through the rocky valley rushing to join the river that ran past the bookshop and out of town to the Potomac and then, ultimately, Chesapeake Bay and the ocean. The water that swirled around Aziraphale’s boots was the same water that ran beside the brunch restaurants in Georgetown, the same water in which Crowley swam every morning. The old memory arose again—the smell of chlorine, Crowley’s narrow elegant feet splashing through a flip turn like a fish rising, the aching pleasure of Aziraphale’s own hand, furtive under the covers. The memory arose and was banished, floated away with the fly line drifting on the current. 

By the time Aziraphale reached the last deep pool before the road it was early evening. The sunlight glanced through the green leaves of the trees, bent at the surface of the water, fell golden and mysterious through the murky depths below. 

Aziraphale ought to feel lucky that Crowley had taken him back, offered him friendship again, knowing all he had said and done (not _all_ , Crowley didn’t know _all_ —this thought, too, arose in Aziraphale’s mind, was banished). 

They were friends again, it was enough. 

(Aziraphale had wanted to kiss him, to press their lips together there in the dusk of the kitchen.)

Friendship had to be enough. 

(Crowley had wanted it too, had leaned in, lips parted. Would one kiss have hurt? Surely one kiss would have been forgivable. Crowley had forgiven so much else already.) 

It _would_ be enough. 

(It wouldn’t have only been one kiss. Aziraphale had always been greedy; he wouldn’t have stopped at one.) 

+++

Thunder rumbled low and distant on the horizon, far off but getting closer. It was time to get out of the river. Aziraphale raised his rod and took one last cast, the line unspooling behind him in the golden evening light then curling forward over the still water, a textbook perfect loop. The light dryfly hung in the air, suspended on the thin transparent tippit, then fluttered down gracefully to the surface of the deep pool. Like something out of a dream, like a graceful dancer leaping into the air, a fish rose to meet it and sipped up the small fly in glorious, perfect motion. 

And then: the tranquil evening shattered, splashing water, thrashing struggle. Aziraphale was so surprised by the strike that he hadn’t set his hands properly on the rod. The drag on the reel whirred, loud in the quiet of the forest. The fish pulled out the line, swam desperately downstream. But it was fruitless. It didn’t matter what he did now, the choice had been made as soon as he rose to meet the fly on the still surface of the water. He was hooked. 

Aziraphale followed a few steps into the deeper water, caught up in a primal sort of impulse to give chase, before he regained his wits and began to work the reel. The fish fought back, for every inch of line. Aziraphale’s breath rasped loud in the still air of the woods, his heart thumped in his ears. The fish’s large body bent the rod, but he was losing the fight. Aziraphale saw the flash of scales under the water in the deep pool and then—then he was there at his feet, a magnificent beast, more than a foot long, thrashing in the shallows. Aziraphale could not even see the hook. It had gone deep inside the fish’s throat; he would need to use his pliers to remove it. The thought filled him with dread. 

He fumbled for his net, slung awkwardly over his shoulder and hard to reach while holding the rod—he had not expected to catch anything. Now that he had, the evident pain and fear of the fish, the way it flopped and struggled in the shallow water distressed him. He had been moved by the beauty of the strike—the golden evening, the storm on the horizon, the way the fish had broken the surface of the water, a fiercely wild thing, the connection he had felt in that moment between the rod in his hand and another living creature. Couldn’t that have been enough? Why did such violence have to come afterwards? 

_Stop it_ , Aziraphale wanted to say to the fish as he struggled. _Don’t you see I’m only trying to help you?_ But of course, the fish wouldn’t understand him, and even if he could, he wouldn’t believe him. Aziraphale had, after all, been the one to hook him. 

The net was finally free. Aziraphale reached down awkwardly, trying to hold the rod and scoop the fish up at the same time, but in that moment the trout gave another mighty lurch, breaking the surface of the water a second time. The sunlight glanced down its shining side. The small piece of fine transparent tippit that connected the fly to the sturdier line snapped off. The fish splashed back under the surface, turned once underwater and swam away. 

Aziraphale stood in the silence, chest heaving as though he had run a great distance. Slowly, feeling returned to his fingertips which had gone numb, as they always did these days in times of stress. He felt as though he _himself_ had been the one to survive a narrow brush with death. Gradually, the light filtering through the trees began to seem warm and friendly again. The birds were singing, still, the rushing water lapped at his knees. A whiff of honeysuckle drifted over from the depths of the forest. Nothing had changed. He had not done any damage after all. And then, as the cool rush of relief was filling Aziraphale like water running into a bowl, like ponds and creeks flowing downhill to a river and then the ocean, the surface of the water in the deep pool in front of him broke again, the fish rose and turned and floated there with his white belly towards the sky. 

_No._ Aziraphale thought. _No, no. Swim away._

But still, the fish drifted. He floated into an eddy below a sycamore tree, flicking his tail weakly. He rolled onto his side and fixed Aziraphale with a dark, lidless eye. 

_No_ , Aziraphale thought, and then he said it out loud. "No, no swim away. Please swim away." 

The fish, of course, did not reply. 

Aziraphale knew then that it was wrong for him to be here. He should leave now; thunder was rumbling in the distance, and besides, he had already done enough damage today. But he had to try. He had to try to make it right. 

"Please," Aziraphale said to the fish, and tried to reach out and gently jostle him with the tip of his rod. "Swim away." 

The fish did no such thing. He flapped his tail again, weaker still, turned in the water and the back current of the eddy brought him closer to Aziraphale, into the shade of a patch of nettles that overhung the bank. 

Aziraphale waded out into waist deep water and scooped his net up underneath the fish and drew him back towards shore. He hardly struggled. Aziraphale had read that sometimes fish were stunned by a long fight. Perhaps all he needed was to be held still in the current for a while, to allow the water to pass gently over his gills. 

Tossing his rod over to the bank, Aziraphale wet his hands and moved into the faster current near the center of the creek. He held the fish loosely by his tail in the moving water. His skin was slimy and soft, the water was very cold. Aziraphale’s fingers slowly lost sensation as he held him. The fish did not seem to mind being held. Up close, Aziraphale could see that he was truly a beautiful creature, an iridescent mottled brown like dappled sunlight, his large jaws scarred from many years of life in the wild. This fish was old. Perhaps he remembered a time, as Aziraphale did, when the mountain that loomed over the creek ended in a craggy summit, not a flat top. 

As Aziraphale cradled the fish underwater, he flopped slowly from one side to the other in the current, tried again to float to the surface. Aziraphale held him down, willed him to regain his strength and swim away. His gills fluttered feebly. The water near them was tinged with red. 

The fish had survived an explosion, a cataclysmic shift of the landscape. He had survived the silt that rolled down the hillside, when there were no longer trees to keep the sediment in check. He had survived mudslides and probably chemicals, too, leaching into the water. And now, after all this time, Aziraphale had arrived to hold him in his hands. Aziraphale had arrived to kill him. 

Softly, as dusk rolled down the hillside and the clouds covered the sky, Aziraphale began to weep. 

He didn’t know what to do. He thought perhaps he should call someone. 

He didn’t have anyone to call. 

(He only had one person to call.) 

He slid the net back underneath the fish, as gently as possible, to prevent him from floating away. He wiped his wet hand on his shirt, reached inside his waders for his phone. 

“Aziraphale?” Crowley answered on the second ring, his voice warm. Aziraphale burst into tears again at the easy way Crowley’s voice curled around his name. Shame crept up the back of his neck. Shame at having hurt such a beautiful creature. Shame at the tears that rolled down his face (“ _What the fuck is wrong with you?_ ” Gabriel hissed in the darkened stairwell, after Aziraphale had been too soft to pull a trigger, after he had cried as they field-dressed a deer together). Shame at still needing Crowley, even now, even after all this time. 

“Aziraphale, are you alright?” Crowley’s voice sharpened, trembled.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Aziraphale managed. “Only something’s happened, can you come —” 

“Yeah of course, I’ll come,” Crowley promised. “Wherever you are, I’ll come to you.” 

***

Crowley, white-faced behind his sunglasses and out of breath, came crashing through the woods only minutes later. He was wearing a one piece romper in a floral pattern with his usual boots. It exposed a great deal of his long pale legs and they were criss crossed by red welts from the briars on either side of the trail. 

“I thought you were hurt,” Crowley said, crouching down on the muddy bank. He looked both very shaken and a bit cross. But he had come. He had come for Aziraphale, simply because Aziraphale said he needed him. He hadn’t asked for any other information, he had just come. 

Aziraphale didn’t deserve him. 

(Aziraphale never had). 

“I’m alright,” Aziraphale said again. “Only, I—I didn’t mean to hurt him, and now I don’t know what to do.” 

He held the net up out of the water. The fish gave one exhausted flop and then lay still. 

Crowley’s face changed. The expression on it morphed into something both puzzled and sad. “If you didn’t want to hurt him, then why were you trying to catch him?” 

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale sniffed and rubbed at his eyes. “I don’t know. What should I do now?” 

“Only one thing to do really,” Crowley said in a soft sort of voice. Aziraphale had known that was what Crowley was going to say but he had hoped, somehow, that there was another trick up his sleeve, that he could unhook this fish the way he had at the dock in his pond, that they could watch him swim away together. 

“We can cook him,” Crowley murmured. “It’s better that way, not letting anything go to waste.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” Aziraphale said again. He didn’t know why he kept saying it. It didn’t matter. What was done was done. 

“I know,” Crowley said in that same soft voice. “I know.” 

“Will you do it?” Aziraphale asked. His voice wobbled. “I know I should I just— I just—”

“Yeah, alright.” Crowley stood, suddenly businesslike. “Give me the net.” Miserably, Aziraphale nodded, handed it over. 

Crowley took the net, bent to his boot and withdrew a folded knife. “Why don’t you go back up the hill to my truck,” he said, and Aziraphale understood that this, too, was a kindness. Crowley was offering him the choice not to watch. “I’ve got a pair of gardening gloves and shears in the back. Pick those up and come back here. We can collect these nettles too. Make a decent meal of it.” 

+++

The sun was setting over the hill, storm clouds spreading out over the sky behind the mountain. As Aziraphale parked his car by the small farm house for the second day in a row, the wind carried the scent of rain. 

He followed Crowley not to the front door, but around the side of the house, up the steps to the tar paper porch, and then through a side door straight into the kitchen. 

The purple light of the oncoming storm exaggerated the stark lines of the small kitchen with its black and white linoleum floor, wooden sideboard and old-fashioned enameled sink and range. The ordinary appliances looked sharp and peculiar in the twilight. A door—half open, mysterious—led into the darkened hallway and the parts of the house that Aziraphale had not yet seen. 

Aziraphale hovered in the center of the kitchen, consumed by a curious sense of deja vu. Yesterday—it had only been yesterday!—he had come inside the house for the very first time, sat across from Crowlely at the scarred wooden table that now seemed so familiar, washed his hands at this very sink and looked up to find Crowley watching him, as though waiting to be kissed. 

Today, the net in Aziraphale’s hand overflowed with fresh nettles and hung heavy with death. 

“Set the nettles in the sink so we can wash them,” Crowley murmured. 

Aziraphale followed Crowley’s instructions, then reached into the net for the fish. Crowley had already cleaned it in the woods, left its insides and scales for scavenging animals to pick through. Now he took the fish from Aziraphale’s unresisting hands, ran it under the tap and then laid it on a cutting board beneath the window. It gleamed, like silver, like flowing water, in the purple evening light. 

Crowley turned, hair cascading down on either side of his neck as he bent to retrieve a cast iron skillet from a cabinet and place it on the stove. Everything felt suspended, hyperreal in the purple dusk as if it was the same light, the same kitchen as yesterday. One full rotation of the earth on its axis, the cycle of the day and night repeating itself. It seemed, then, to Aziraphale that this cycle would continue as long as necessary, a second chance, a third, a thousand chances, infinite evenings until he got it right. He thought of pressing his lips to that triangle of skin on the back of Crowley’s neck, just above his collar, revealed by the parted curtain of his hair. He wanted to do it; he thought Crowley would let him.

Aziraphale stepped forward, but just then Crowley shook his hair away from his face, reached to put it up into its usual bun. The wind blew in the open window heavy with the scent of rain. The moment passed, seamlessly, into the next; into the slow, inexorable current of the evening. 

Aziraphale reminded himself that he did not believe in infinite chances. He did not even believe in second chances. And anyway, this evening was nothing like the evening that had preceded it. Yesterday had been peaceful. Tonight a storm was on the way. 

Crowley turned to him and pressed a pair of shears into his hand. “Go on out to the porch —there’s an herb box beneath the kitchen window. I think we’ll want some thyme and parsley and rosemary.” He paused, face inscrutable behind the sunglasses which he had not taken off, not even in the darkness, not even indoors. “There’s a vegetable garden by the pond. It’s the right time of year for new potatoes and they’ll go well with the fish. Do you know what a potato plant looks like?” 

“No.” 

“That’s alright,” Crowley said, soft, the way he had been at the riverbank. “I’ll show you. Come on.” 

The breeze blew the kitchen door shut behind them. They walked down the hill to the pond which glimmered in the lowering dusk. Crowley pressed a hand trowel into his palm, showed him where and how to dig. 

“I’ll go back to the house, get everything else ready. Will you be alright down here?” 

Aziraphale nodded. 

Crowley disappeared into the twilight, leaving him alone in the garden. Aziraphale sunk his hands into the dirt. Lightning flashed in the distance over the top of the mountain, followed much later, by a low roll of thunder. Aziraphale rolled the small new potatoes in his hands, knocked them against one another to release the clinging soil. 

Back in the kitchen, Crowley had turned the lights on. They blazed like a beacon in the twilight, spilling out over the grass of the hillside. Aziraphale came in the side door, wiping his boots on the mat, and was immediately assailed by the smell of cooking—butter heating in the cast iron skillet, the fresh scent of citrus. 

Crowley set Aziraphale to scrubbing the potatoes in the sink, chopping them into halves and arranging them with the rosemary on a baking sheet. In the warmth and light of the kitchen, with Crowley brushing past him in the small space, the cold grief Azirpahale had felt alone in the river mutated into an unexpected satisfaction. It was an ancient satisfaction, the joy of having staved off hunger and darkness for another night, of caring, in the most basic way, for another human being. No one had ever cooked for Aziraphale before. 

Crowley stepped around him to lay the filets and a handful of herbs in the hot butter. The skillet sizzled; the air filled with the savory, clean aroma of exceptionally fresh fish, the rich scent of thyme. Aziraphale was sorry for the fish, but he was glad to be standing here with Crowley, to watch Crowely’s quick, clever hands dance over the hot skillet, to listen to the crackle of the skin and feel the strange, primal joy of having provided a meal—gathered it from the river and the woods and the earth itself—to sustain them both. Crowley had been right; it was better this way. It was not a waste. 

***

The table was set. The fish steamed gently, nestled in a bed of nettles in the skillet. The potatoes, retrieved from the oven, cooled on the sideboard. Night had fallen entirely outside and with it came the rain, pattering loud on the tin roof of Crowley’s house. Crowley hadn’t closed the window above the sink. The fresh scent of wet earth blew in with the wind, flickering the flame of a stout beeswax candle set between them. 

Crowley held a dusty bottle in his hand, retrieved from somewhere in the mysterious interior of his house. 

“Dandelion wine?” he asked. 

“Yes please, just a little?” 

Crowley came around the table to stand behind Aziraphale. He leaned over him with the bottle to pour the amber liquid into Aziraphale’s glass and Aziraphale caught the scent of him—peppermint shampoo, butter and thyme from the cooking, a faint hint of cigarettes, underneath it all something dark and masculine, uniquely Crowley—more intoxicating than any wine. 

Aziraphale rose to help serve the food, but Crowley laid a hand on his shoulder, pressing him down. 

“Let me,” Crowley murmured, taking Aziraphale’s plate. When he returned to set the full plate in front of Aziraphale, he was no longer wearing his sunglasses. He drew out the chair across from Aziraphale and sat, regarded him with his honey-brown eye. His expression was still inscrutable, even now, without the glasses. 

In the soft candlelight, even the harsh lines of Crowley’s scar looked flattering. The serpent tattoo on the side of his face seemed to shimmer and curl over the old wound like a live creature. Was he allowed to ask about it, Aziraphale wondered? How long after did he get it? Why a serpent? Did it hurt? 

“Go on then,” Crowley said, watching Aziraphale’s face. “Try it.” 

Aziraphale reached down with his fork, flaked off a bite of the fish and caught some of the nettles beneath it with the tines. Crowley’s eye did not leave his face as Aziraphale raised the fork, passed it between his lips. He very nearly moaned at the taste. The fish melted into his mouth. It tasted of butter and thyme and lemon, but also, somehow, of the warmth of the sun falling through the trees, the breeze whispering through the forest floor, the cool mystery of twenty seasons in a spring fed stream in the shadow of a once majestic mountain. 

Crowley’s eyelid fluttered and he took a breath, mouth parted. “Good?” he asked. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale took a bite of potato. The crispy, salted outside burst in his mouth, buttery, earthy softness followed. “Very good. Will you teach me to cook like this?” 

“There’s no secret to it.” Crowley took a sip of his wine. “Very fresh ingredients, prepared simply. You dug the potatoes and chopped them, gathered the nettles from the streambank. You caught the fish. Everything you’re eating now was living an hour ago. That’s what’s good.” 

“The life in it?” 

Crowley looked at him oddly. “I suppose. Try the wine.” 

Aziraphale raised the glass of sweet, strong wine to his lips. He knew he ought not to have more than a few sips of it. The world was slipping sideways already—the angled candle flame flickering in the wind from the open window, the uneven black and white linoleum floor, the tilt of Crowley’s head as he watched him, the curling serpent over scarred flesh. Lightning flashed outside, followed by the slow roll of thunder. The small hairs on the back of Azirahale’s arms stood up. His fingers were numb as he lifted the fork to his mouth, tasted a summer in Eden on his tongue. 

“I don’t think it’s only the ingredients,” Aziraphale said, before he could stop himself. “I think it’s also how it’s prepared.” 

“How it’s prepared?” Crowley asked. He had finished his wine, a flush had risen high on his cheeks. 

“By you,” Aziraphale said, and knew then, in that moment, that it was true. 

The words hung in the air and then Crowley’s lips curled into a soft, secretive sort of smile. “I’m glad you like it,” was all he said. He raised his own fork to his lips. 

They ate together in silence, in the flickering candlelight, as the storm blew down from the mountain, the rainwater rolling down the steep sides of the valley to the creek below. 

***

Crowley bustled at the sideboard, opened and closed the freezer, a sudden whirlwind of energy now that both of their plates were empty. 

"Would you like dessert? I don’t have any more blueberry crisp, but I have some ice cream from a place just down the road. They make it fresh from their own cows.” 

Aziraphale dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, trying to shake off the odd, languorous intensity of dinner. “That would be lovely my dear. Do you need any help clearing the plates? Doing the dishes?” 

“No, no, it’s fine,” Crowley swept over, collected his own plate and silverware, and put them in the sink. He came around to stand behind Aziraphale’s chair, and bent to take Aziraphale’s empty plate. His long hair, which he had let down again over dinner, brushed against Aziraphale’s shoulder, filling his nose with another whiff of that familiar, intoxicating smell. 

"Let me just—" Crowley murmured, reaching for the plate. He didn't take it. He stood there leaning over Aziraphale's chair, hand braced on the table beside the empty plate, silent. A sudden gust of wind snapped the curtains on either side of the half-opened kitchen window, dispelled the heavy, languorous air and replaced it with something sharper, tingling with ozone. Aziraphale shifted slightly in his seat and as he did so, Crowley's long nose dragged, like a whisper, against the soft skin behind his ear. Crowley did not pull away. Instead, his other hand came around to rest on the table too. Aziraphale trembled and waited, bracketed by the cradle of Crowley's spread arms.

Crowley's nose touched again, more deliberately this time, along the shivering sensitive skin of his hairline. Aziraphale understood that Crowley was going to kiss him. In the half second before it happened, he also understood with a sinking awful certainty that he was going to let Crowley kiss him. He ought to stop it. There was still time. He ought to stand up now and push his chair in and drive home. They could go on ignoring this simmering crackling tension as they had done ever since Aziraphale returned to Eden. Aziraphale's pulse bounded in his ears, bounded in his groin. He did not stand up. Instead, he tilted his head back ever so slightly. Crowley drew in a quick breath, like he was steeling himself for pain, and ducked his head to press his lips to Aziraphale's.

It was the faintest of pressure, the lightest of touches. Crowley pulled back half an inch and breathed out a low sigh. Aziraphale breathed it in, the same air. With infinite care, Crowley lowered his lips again to Aziraphale's, warm and gentle. 

_I should pull away_. Aziraphale thought. (He fisted his hand in the fine fabric of Crowley’s top, drawing him closer). 

_Tell him this is a misunderstanding_. (He put his other hand on the table to lever himself up to stand, struggled up from the chair without releasing Crowley, without breaking the kiss.) 

_Make my excuses_. (Aziraphale licked and bit at Crowley’s lips until they opened, slid his tongue between them, drank down the strangled noise Crowley made into his mouth.) 

_Leave now, no hard feelings_. (Aziraphale’s other hand migrated into Crowley’s hair and tightened there. He kicked the chair away without taking his mouth off of Crowley's, pushed him back and back until they hit the wood paneled wall hard enough to shake the cutlery on the table and rattle the curtain rods above the counter.)

Crowley gasped as Aziraphale broke away finally to bury his face in the crook of his neck, inhaling whole lungfuls of him, nipping at the soft skin there. And then they were kissing again, messily, Crowley’s mouth opening to Aziraphale’s easily this time, letting him in, letting himself be devoured. Crowley tasted of the dinner they had shared and dandelion wine and underneath it all, exactly the same as he had thirty years ago. Aziraphale couldn’t get enough.

“Jesus, you’re so—” Crowley tried to say, but the dam had broken now, the flood was everywhere. Aziraphale couldn’t bear to tear his mouth away from Crowley’s long enough to let him get the words out; he swallowed them instead. It was perfect. It was everything he had wanted for weeks. It was everything he had wanted since he was eighteen. Aziraphale twisted his hand in Crowley’s hair, bit at his jaw, slid his lips upwards to mouth gently at his earlobe where the fishing fly still dangled. 

“—Ah,” Crowley’s head fell back against the wall, exposing the elegant, pale column of his throat. Aziraphale stepped in further, pinning Crowley to the wall with his body, one long line from chest to hip. The jumpsuit was very thin, it hid nothing. Crowley squirmed against Aziraphale, hips stuttering forward against the curve of Aziraphale’s belly. 

Thunder rumbled outside. Aziraphale growled and bit at Crowley’s neck. His hand had fallen from Crowley’s jumpsuit to the outside of his bare thigh. He hoisted one of Crowley’s long, elegant legs with one hand to get closer, closer until he was sure Crowley could feel him too, pressing insistently against the fly of the shapeless Walmart jeans. 

Aziraphale rolled his hips, spread his hand on Crowley’s leg, lifting, searching for a better angle. Crowley’s mouth went slack, his head fell back again, breath harsh in Aziraphale’s ear. Aziraphale nosed into Crowley’s hair, searching out the smell of Crowley’s skin beneath the peppermint and cigarettes. “You’ve no idea how it’s been these past few weeks,” Crowley was saying. “You’ve no idea how much I’ve wanted—”

Aziraphale pulled Crowley’s hair harder, hitched his leg up further, rocked their bodies together again. “God you’re so strong,” Crowley's thigh trembled in his grasp. “I’ve wanted you—” whatever he was going to say was lost in the wet, frantic, press of lips. Dimly Aziraphale registered that Crowley’s fingers had skated around to his front, were fumbling at the fastening of his belt. A distant part of Aziraphale knew he ought to stop, but his hips were snapping forward without input of his brain. It felt so good, cradled like this in the warmth of another body for the first time in years. To hold another man in his arms. To hold Crowley like this again, a closeness Aziraphale had allowed himself only sparingly a very long time ago, and desired ever since, but never deserved. Aziraphale raised his face from Crowley’s neck just as Crowley made a desperate sort of noise low in his throat, turned his head to kiss him again. Time slowed and changed. Aziraphale lost track of it entirely in the warm, wet tangle of lips and tongues, the delirious press of his own body against the hard line of flesh rising between Crowley’s thighs. 

Pleasure built at the base of Aziraphale’s spine. He rolled his hips; short, vicious thrusts that seemed to knock all the breath out of them both. His hand slipped from Crowley’s hair, slid down the side of his face, brushed against rough scar tissue—

“Sorry,” Aziraphale gasped, stilling. “Sorry, I didn’t mean —” 

“No it’s—” Crowley’s hand came up, covered Aziraphale’s, held it against the twisted scar. “Please, it’s good, it’s good, it’s so good—” 

Aziraphale leaned in and kissed him again, an uncoordinated, needy mess of teeth and lips and tongue, moved his hips savagely as though he could erase all the space between them, as though he could fuck Crowley like this, through the layers of fabric, dug his fingers in hard against the scar on the side of Crowley’s face—

Thunder cracked outside, louder than a gunshot, shaking the panes of glass in the windows and the door. Awareness came abruptly in its wake, like cold water trickling down Aziraphale’s spine. His cheek was sweaty. Strands of Crowley’s hair stuck there and clung as he pulled back from their embrace. He set Crowley’s leg down gingerly, smoothed the fabric of the jumpsuit down to cover his shivering thigh. 

One of Crowley’s hands was still tangled in Aziraphale’s belt buckle, had it halfway to undone already. They both stared down at it, trying to catch their breath, as thunder rumbled outside, further away this time. The storm, evidently, was passing over. 

“Ah—do you—” Crowley said, voice rough and broken, long fingers toying with the leather of the belt. “Should we—bed?” 

_Yes_ , Aziraphale wanted to say. He wanted it so badly. He wanted to let Crowley lead him into the mysterious interior beyond that door, press him down somewhere soft as the summer storm lashed the windows. He wanted to let those clever hands touch him until he forgot why they shouldn’t. He wanted to go to bed with Crowley so terribly, but he knew he couldn’t, and he was too much of a coward to tell Crowley why, here in the warm coziness of the kitchen with the fresh scent of the rain coming in the windows. He did not want to shatter the moment. 

(The shock of recognition after thirty years apart. A dropped glass splintering into pieces on the concrete porch of the bookshop, the bloom of red on Aziraphale’s finger as he bent to pick up the shards, first the blood and then, later, the pain, thunder nipping on the heels of a flash of lightning.) 

“Not...not tonight,” he said. “Come by the bookshop tomorrow.” 

“Alright,” Crowley sounded disappointed, but not surprised. The softness in his voice, the kindness, was somehow worse than hurt. “Whatever you want, whatever you need. It’s fine. Do you want to stay for dessert? Actual dessert I mean not...not anything else.” 

Aziraphale looked around at the homey glow of the kitchen. The ice cream would undoubtedly be delicious, but he didn’t want it. He wanted Crowley. He didn’t trust himself. He might not even wait, he might throw the bowl of ice cream to the floor and have Crowley here in the kitchen, against the wall or bent over the table like an animal. 

“Better not,” Aziraphale said. Both of his hands had migrated to Crowley’s waist, were holding tight to his sharp, elegant hips. He forced his fingers, one by one, to unclench.

“Walk you to your car?” Crowley asked. His own hands had come between them again, were doing up Aziraphale’s belt with slow gentle touches that nearly caused the lump in Aziraphale throat to rise and spill out, for the second time today, as tears. Aziraphale didn’t know if he could speak. He nodded. 

The storm had abated somewhat, but the rain was still coming down in heavy sheets outside. Crowley opened an umbrella, pulled Aziraphale close underneath it. The smell of him rose above the fresh scent of the rain and wet earth—the peppermint of his shampoo, cut through now by the unmistakable sharpness of arousal. It was nearly too much, but Aziraphale bore it. He bore it until they reached his car and his hand was on the door handle and then he couldn’t bear it anymore. 

He pulled Crowley into him, crushed their lips together again. Crowley seemed to have reached his breaking point at the same time. He opened his mouth eagerly to the first press of Aziraphale’s lips, brought a hand up to Aziraphale’s face to tilt his head to the side, deepen the kiss. Aziraphale let out an exhale of breath into Crowley’s mouth, Crowley made a small sound of relief in his throat and the umbrella tumbled away to the gravel, they were kissing properly again with the rain falling all around, drenching them both, and this time it was Crowley crowding Aziraphale back against the side of his car, holding him in place and licking into his mouth with a flattering hunger. They were both fully soaked by the time Crowley pulled back a fraction, his long hair dripping onto Azirpaphale’s shoulders. 

“You’re sure you have to go back to the bookshop?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale allowed himself to consider again, for a brief moment, the illumination of a lightning strike, what it might have been like. Laughing as they stripped their wet clothes off in the kitchen, Crowley’s hand in his, leading him down that dark hallway, falling into one another, carefree and happy. 

“I’m sure,” Aziraphale said, pulling away. “I’m sorry.” 

Crowley extricated himself slowly, took a deep breath, seemingly to collect himself, then shot Aziraphale a shy sort of grin, the flash of teeth in the darkness. “I don’t mind, really. Told you, I’d wait.” 

Aziraphale couldn’t help himself. He leaned in again, swiftly, gave Crowley a brief closed mouth peck on the lips. It tasted only of rainwater and grief. “Come by the bookshop tomorrow morning.” 

“I will,” Crowley promised. “I will.” 

Aziraphale got into the car, water sloshing in his shoes, his clothes soaking the seat beneath him. Crowley bent to collect the umbrella from the gravel and stood to the side of the driveway, hand raised in a jaunty wave, illuminated in silhouette by the light of Aziraphale’s high beams cutting through the sheeting rain. 

***

Later, at the bookshop, Aziraphale tossed and turned and could not sleep. He kept returning over and over to a memory of the day. Not the recollection of Crowley pressed up against him, in the kitchen or in the rain later, although he had replayed both memories in rather hands-on detail in the warm shower immediately after coming home. 

No, as he lay awake, Aziraphale could not stop thinking of the fading sunlight on a riverbank, the sweet, floral scent of honeysuckle, the sound of the red winged blackbirds crying to one another in the marshes, and the sad, puzzled way Crowley had said, “if you didn’t want to hurt him, then why were you trying to catch him?” 

Around three in the morning, as the thunderstorm raged on outside the windows of the bookshop, Aziraphale fell into a fitful doze, cut through by the familiar thrum of the helicopter blades, the slam of the cage door, the whirr of the electric engines, the flash of two piercing golden eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you skipped the +++ section, this is what happens: Aziraphale is fly fishing and catches a very large and very old fish. He accidentally hooks it too deeply, mortally wounding it. Aziraphale is very distraught and calls Crowley, who comes and offers to put the fish out of its misery and cook it together for dinner.
> 
> Spoilers for the rest of the chapter in the notes below.   
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> 
> Ok so yes, there is still a bit of angst, but WE MADE IT! Only took 70k to get to the first kiss (this is a callout of me, by me). I hope y'all enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it! There’s still a lot of unsettled things for Aziraphale and Crowley to work out, but once they have a few conversations, there are some ~spicy~ chapters on the horizon. Thanks as always for reading! 
> 
> A few other miscellaneous chapter notes: 
> 
> Whew, I guess I really enjoy a tense dinner scene. You can thank the Hannibal fandom for that particular writing quirk! If you like tense dinner scenes, you can also read another of my fics (canon compliant) which is probably about 90% tense dinner scene: [Bleak Without and Bare Within](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24628912/chapters/59502343). 
> 
> I am a huge fan of rompers. I think they look good on everyone. [ Here’s the one](https://lagunaclothingcompany.com/womens-black-floral-romper/) I imagine Crowley wearing in this chapter, although I think instead of red flowers they are a light cornflower blue. 
> 
> It occurred to me that a lot of readers might not be familiar with nettles. They come in a lot of varieties, but in the Eastern US, it’s really common to find [ stinging nettles](https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/urtica-dioica/) in the woods. As the name suggests, they do sting you if you try to touch them (hence the gardening gloves to harvest them) but once you cook them down the stingers disintegrate and they sort of taste vibrant and earthy like kale but with the soft texture of spinach. Stinging nettle is a good one to gather and eat because with the stingers it’s pretty hard mess up identifying it and eat the wrong thing. Highly recommend! 
> 
> And, last but not least in this absurdly long endnote: somehow, SOMEHOW I really don’t know how, this chapter marks 200k total words on AO3 for me. When I put my first fic up a year and a half ago, I really never thought I would write another one, let alone get to this point. I have so much gratitude for this fandom for being lovely and encouraging and for enabling me to start writing again for the first time since childhood! <3


	13. The Lives We’ve Lived

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw a post on tumblr recently that was like: “finally at the part of the story I wanted to write after 80k of set up” and fam, that’s how I feel about this chapter & what’s coming next! 
> 
> Thanks again to [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for the beta read! 
> 
> CW: This chapter earns one of the major tags on this story. For a more detailed CW (that will spoil the plot of the chapter) see the end notes. References to caregiving during terminal illness (mostly confined to the very last paragraph if you want to skip it).

The runway unspooled ahead of him, a ribbon of light in the winter afternoon sun. The way ahead was crystal clear, as were the instruments in the cockpit, but everything else was muted, a hazy dreamscape. Crowley was running the pre-takeoff checklist, as he had done countless times. The compass and heading indicator matched. A slight cross wind blew from the east. Anticipation curled low in Crowley’s belly as it always did when he flew (a sudden, disorienting shift in the familiar dream—the flash of Aziraphale’s eyes meeting his across the dinner table in the purple light of the storm—). 

His hand on the throttle. Max power: one, two, three seconds. The roar of sound, the exhilarating acceleration, the needle on the airspeed indicator twitching to life. The horizon stretched and then he felt the gentle, bobbing rise of the nose beneath him. The ancient, beat up airschool cessna rattled with yearning for the open sky, wanted to fly as badly as he did. All he had to do was let it. He pulled back—gently, gently—on the yoke (he bent to press his lips to Aziraphale’s—gently, gently—). 

The ground fell away below. The force of gravity, trying futility to reassert control, slammed him back in his seat (Aziraphale’s hands against his chest, Aziraphale pushing him back against the wall in the kitchen). The whine of the engine was loud even through the borrowed set of flight school headphones (Aziraphale’s little gasping breaths in his ear, hitching with each thrust of his hips). Everything shuddered and shook, buffeted by the forces of lift and drag (Aziraphale’s hand on his thigh, warm and solid and entirely indecent on his bare skin, spread fingers hitching his trembling leg higher and higher). Many things in life had turned out to be great disappointments, but flight—flight was every bit as miraculous as Crowley had dreamed. 

The runway dropped rapidly behind him. He was past the end of it now, too late now for a safe abort—the only way back to the ground was to fly the pattern, go around, see it through. Crowley let up on the yoke and radioed the pattern into air traffic control. The little plane leveled out. The trees were matchsticks below. The mountainside stood out in sharp relief in the winter sun, light flashing on the whirling blades of the windmills installed on the back of the ridge. Even now, even at level, the plane was a living thing, constantly moving, lifted and dropped by the curl of the wind. 

_An airplane is subject to four forces: lift, weight, drag, and thrust_. This phrase, from another dream long ago, cast forward into this one, was tinged with wonder. Crowley glided, suspended by the physics of flight, high above the dark earth that had once tried to swallow him whole, alone in the boundless sky. 

Crowley knew he was middle aged, he knew he was blind in one eye, but, caught on the border between sleep and wakefulness, between memory and dream, suspended in the crystal clarity of altitude, he forgot both of these things. He forgot, too, the air of aloof disinterest he had worked hard to cultivate, the impenetrable protective shell that fit him like a second skin, forgot that he could only cry out of one eye and took a trembling hand off the yoke to wipe at both of them under his sunglasses as he had on the day of his first solo flight, when there was no one in the cockpit with him to see how much it _mattered_. There was no one up here in the cloudless sky to see the soft, quick thing that lived inside him, no-one to judge him for it. There was no one at all. (“Sorry,” Aziraphale gasped, hand dropping from Crowley’s scar, “sorry I didn’t mean…” and then the sense memory of Crowley’s own hand closing around Aziraphale’s wrist, the thrum of the pulse there, of both their pulses, wild and desperate, as Crowley brought those fingers back up to the place where he had been split open by the mountain. The ungentle press of of Aziraphale’s hand, fingers clawing at him hard enough he could feel it, for once, through the scar tissue, and it was good, it was good, it was good—) 

***

The sky was blue and full of birdsong as Crowley tossed on a pair of overalls and walked down the hill to feed the goats. The dream, half-remembered, clung like cobwebs to the edges of his thoughts. He still felt light, weightless, buoyed up by the force of lift, by Aziraphale’s hands on his skin. 

In the bright morning sun it was nearly unbelievable. Had there even been a storm? Had Aziraphale been here last night or was it a mirage, an illusion, a ghost from thirty years ago who had nearly fucked him up against the wall of his own kitchen, kissed him wildly in the sheeting rain, gasped out a fervent request— _come to the bookshop tomorrow_. It all seemed so improbable, so much like the stuff of Crowley’s fantasies, that even now he wasn’t entirely sure it had really happened. 

A small mirror hung in the feed room of the barn, installed by the family who had lived here before Crowley bought the farm. Crowley hadn’t bothered to remove it and now he stared at his own reflection in the dingy light of the single bulb. A trail of purple marks ran from his jawline to his collarbone. He pressed at them wonderingly while the impatient goats kicked their feed tins and made noises outside. The marks were slightly sore under his fingers. Touching them sent a rushing giddiness through Crowley’s limbs, almost painful, like the shock of an electric fence. Outside in the pasture, downed branches, torn off in the storm, dotted the sun drenched field. He hadn’t imagined last night after all. 

On the way up the hill, he paused to gather flowers that grew on either side of the path—black eyed susans and daisies and queen anne’s lace and a few long grasses with elegant purple tops. Cornflowers grew there too—the same light grey blue as Aziraphale’s eyes—Crowley paused to regard them, but did not pick any. He had tried before, but they always closed up immediately once cut and brought inside. 

In the kitchen, he gathered the bouquet up with twine and then in a fit of indecision, undid the twine and jammed the stems into an antique coke bottle he had found in the woods.. 

Were flowers even appropriate? Aziraphale had always enjoyed being treated chivalrously. He used to like it when Crowley held doors for him, took his coat off his shoulders, lit his stolen cigarettes, back when they both smoked. But what about now? Would he find it patronising or pressuring or worst of all, _pathetic_ , for Crowley to show up on his doorstep with a bouquet like some sort of old fashioned suitor? And what if romance wasn’t what he wanted out of this at all? What if what he wanted was a quick fuck, no strings attached, certainly no _demonstrations_ of affection? 

_Come to the bookshop tomorrow_. What a horribly enigmatic request. It could have meant so many things. It could have meant, _I want to finish what we started_ —Crowley’s eyes tracked inevitably to the wood paneled wall by the table and he gulped—or it could have meant, _I’ve made a terrible mistake and I’m going to spend all night working out how to tell you that I never want to see you again._ Or perhaps it simply meant that today was Monday, a work day, and Crowley still had half a dozen odd jobs around the bookshop that he’d promised to finish. What if he was reading far too much into it? With Aziraphale, he never knew. 

The flowers, arranged haphazardly in the coke bottle, offered up no answers. Crowley ground his teeth together and dithered in the center of his kitchen, then threw his hands up in the air and went to get dressed. 

He took a bit longer in the bathroom than he usually would have, scrubbing thoroughly in the shower, brushing his teeth extra carefully, attending to—other matters—too, because even though Aziraphale had said quite plainly he didn’t want to rush things, Crowley had always been, to his own great consternation, an incorrigible optimist. 

It was this same trait, he reflected as he struggled into his usual skin tight jeans and a shirt with a low collar (showing off exactly where Aziraphale’s mouth had been last night), that explained the absurd impulse to bring Aziraphale _flowers_. 

By the time Crowley made his way out of the house, the morning mist had burned off in the hollow by the creek. The sun beat down relentlessly. Crowley bounced his knee mindlessly as he settled himself in the truck. _Be cool_ , he told himself, turning the key in the ignition. _Be cool, it’s only Aziraphale. You’ve known him forever._

(Crowley had known Aziraphale before anyone else. Known his soft, strong hands, known his lips, known the taste of his skin, and more besides—known his laugher, his terrible fondness for gossip, his acute sense of right and wrong, that little wiggle he did with his shoulders when he was relaxed and happy and exceptionally pleased about something. It was only Aziraphale. Out of everyone else Crowley had ever slept with or wanted to sleep with, it was _only_ Aziraphale.) 

“Ah, fuck it,” he muttered, and ran back inside for the flowers. 

***

Crowley rang the old-fashioned bookshop doorbell, then cringed, wondering if it would have been better to just let himself in the way he usually did and call up the stairs to tell Aziraphale he had arrived. It took several long moments for Aziraphale to come to the door, long enough for Crowley to convince himself that he had definitely _made it weird_. Then there was the muffled sound of approaching footsteps and the hazy outline of Aziraphale’s soft curls appeared behind the wavy glass of the bookshop door. 

Be cool, Crowley told himself sternly, shifting back and forth on the balls of his feet. Be cool. 

On the fifteen minute drive over to the shop, Crowley had imagined all the different suave ways he could start conversation. In the second after Aziraphale opened the door, every single one of them fled. Aziraphale was wearing neatly pressed trousers, and a white shirt and bowtie. The sleeves were rolled up to his elbows in deference to the humid West Virginia summer and he was barefoot. Crowley couldn’t take his eyes off the narrow arch of his feet, how pale and vulnerable they looked. 

“Er, um, got you these,” Crowley said, thrusting the flowers into the space between them like a sword. 

“Oh.” A wild sort of look appeared on Aziraphale’s face. Crowley couldn’t quite parse the emotion behind it, and didn’t have a chance because it was gone in an instant, replaced by a sort of cultivated blankness that turned Crowley’s blood to concrete. 

“You shouldn’t have.” Aziraphale reached out to take the flowers, careful, it seemed, not to let their fingers brush. 

“It was no trouble really,” Crowley winced at the loud, overly enthusiastic, sound of his voice, forged bravely ahead. “They grow—grow wild in the meadow behind my house.” 

“Anyway, it’s very—” Aziraphale’s face split into another emotion, a crack in a smooth plaster wall, before this too was smoothed away. But it was too late, Crowley had recognized it this time as sorrow. “—kind of you,” he finished. “Why don’t you come inside?” 

Numbly, Crowley followed him through the door and into the dark interior of the shop. How had he gone so wrong already? He had anticipated many different reactions from Aziraphale—passion, rejection, indifference—but somehow this barely concealed grief was far worse than anything he might have expected. It was like Aziraphale was mourning the end of something before it had even properly had a chance to begin. 

Aziraphale started up the stairs to Agnes’ apartment. The concrete in Crowley’s blood had migrated to his legs, weighing down his feet in their snakeskin boots. He concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other on the stairs. It took a tremendous effort. 

“I’m sorry if the flowers were too much—” Crowley started as soon as they were in the small apartment. 

“No,” Aziraphale said with surprising forcefulness. “Don’t apologize.” He set the flowers on the kitchen table. “I love them.” 

He sat down, gestured for Crowley to sit too. The tight knot in Crowley’s chest eased minutely. Whatever was happening here, Aziraphale clearly expected it to take a while. He wasn’t going to kick Crowley to the curb right this instant. Crowley sat with a rush of relief and gratitude, looked around Agnes’ familiar, homey kitchen, and remembered some of what he had been planning to say. 

“Thought you could come over for dinner again tonight. I could make you something nice, we could have some of the desert we never got to yesterday, pick up where we left off…” Aziraphale’s face hadn’t moved a muscle. “...or not,” Crowley continued carefully, “I could...slow down, if it’s all too much, we don’t have to rush at all or—”

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Crowley,” Aziraphale cut him off, his mouth a hard line.

“No? Well, it doesn’t have to be dinner—” 

“Dinner, having….relations, sleeping together, dating, whatever you want to call it—it’s not,” Aziraphale sighed, “not a good idea.” 

Crowley opened his mouth, closed it again, tilted his head to the side hoping he had misheard. That same concrete sludge, heavy and cold, crawled up his insides, choked off his breath. “Not a good idea?” he managed eventually. 

Aziraphale tipped his head back with an air of finality. “I think we’re better off as friends.” It would have been more convincing were it not for the way his chin trembled.

“ _Are_ we friends?” Crowley asked. 

“I should like to think so, although I will understand if you, if you don’t want to see me again after how I behaved last night, my utter lack of self control—” Aziraphale sounded as though every word was being dragged out of him. 

Crowley blinked at him behind his sunglasses. “I kissed _you_ ,” he pointed out. “I wanted it. I still—” God it was excruciating, talking it out like this. Crowley would have much rather pulled Aziraphale towards him, dispensed with talking altogether. But that’s what they used to do, and where had it led them in the end? Crowley was thirty years older, and perhaps a bit wiser now, and understood that communication was sometimes an unpleasant necessity. “I still want it,” he finished softly, watching Aziraphale’s eyes. “Don’t...don’t you?” 

Aziraphale shuddered, a full body heave, and the closed off expression from downstairs reappeared on his face. Crowley didn’t like that expression one bit. 

“It doesn’t matter what I want,” Aziraphale said. 

“Of course it matters. I mean, if you don’t like me that’s one thing, but—” 

“I do like you,” Aziraphale interjected, looking miserable. “I like you a great deal in fact.” His words were cold, clipped. 

Crowley stared at him in disbelief. “Are you _angry_ that you like me?” 

Aziraphale didn’t answer him directly, but his jaw clenched. “I didn’t plan for any of this, Crowley.” 

“Neither did I. But look—” Crowley knew he sounded desperate, but none of this made _sense_. If Aziraphale had said, _I don’t want to be with you_ , he wouldn’t have pushed like this. He would have acknowledged Aziraphale’s feelings, thanked him for his time, and driven home to get back into bed and hide morosely under the covers like a gentleman. But Aziraphale hadn’t said that he didn’t want to be with Crowley, he had dodged the question entirely. It was maddening. 

“We like each other, you just said so. What possible reason could you have to stop us from being together, trying to date, properly this time? Unless...unless…” Crowley plucked at a frayed thread at the hem of his shirt, which had come from Walmart. The jeans were from Goodwill, stained on the thigh from working on The Bentley. Crowley hadn’t noticed the stain until now. “Unless, it _is_ something about me?”

Aziraphale’s lip wobbled. “It’s not you.”

“Well then what is it?” Crowley asked, knowing it was rude to keep asking, but he was properly frustrated now. “I already told you, we can slow down if its too much, too fast, we can—”

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale twisted the ring he always wore around his pinky finger. “It’s not so simple as fast and slow. We can’t go back now. We can’t go back to the past to change things, however much we might want to.”

“I don’t want to go back to the past,” Crowley said, dumbstruck. But of course this was it, of course this was the problem. Of course, Aziraphale, who fussed over antiques for a living, who spent his days puttering around a dusty old shop, who always had his nose buried in some ancient catalogue or another, burnishing a bit of marble or iron back to its former glory, would have a hard time letting the past go, would worry it like a loose tooth in his mouth. Aziraphale had asked Crowley for a blank slate, but it turned out he couldn’t manage one for himself. It made Crowley want to tear his hair out in frustration. 

“Look,” Crowley said, “It doesn’t have to matter what we were like then. I like you now, that’s the important bit. I already told you, I don’t care about what happened between us before. I care about now. Let’s just...try to be together now.”

“Don’t you see, though, we can’t.” Aziraphale kept twisting the ring. “We’ve both lived full lives since we were eighteen years old, we’ve made many choices, there’s damage that can’t be undone...it’s just….impossible, Crowley. I’m sorry, I really, truly am.”

The stony expression on Aziraphale’s face had cracked again and underneath it Crowley could see that he was trying very hard not to cry. Crowley knew he ought to stop, to take the rejection for what it was, but something Aziraphale had said, _there’s damage that can’t be undone_ , had lodged in him like a thorn and he was determined to pick it out.

“Aziraphale, don’t tell me it’s about—” Crowley raised a hand to his temple, to his ruined left eye beneath his sunglasses.

“No,” Aziraphale said vehemently. “No, Crowley never. I told you it’s not about you at all.”

“Then what is it?” Crowley spread his hands wide. “What are you trying to tell me?”

“I’m trying to tell you—” Aziraphale broke his gaze to look out the window, his face briefly outlined in profile by the morning sun. “I’m trying to tell you that I have HIV.”

Silence descended once more on the little apartment above the bookshop. Numbly, Crowley looked at the vase of flowers on the table, thought of whistling to himself as he picked them this morning on the hillside wet with dew. The sunlight fell through the heavy glass bottle, fell through the water, twisted and pooled on the tablecloth, shifting and bright.

“Listen, there’s—there’s no risk in—in having kissed,” Aziraphale seemed to be struggling with the words. “I want you to know that. I want you to know I wouldn’t have let it go on if—” 

“I wasn’t worried about it,” Crowley said, quite truthfully. He was still processing the enormity of Aziraphale’s quiet declaration, hadn’t yet gotten to the point where he could consider what it meant for _him_. 

“How long?” Crowley asked.

“What?” 

“How long have you—” he cleared his throat, shifted on his seat, let the sentence trail off into the stifling quiet. 

“Nearly twenty years,” Aziraphale said, still looking out the window. He was no longer turning the ring about his pinky finger, but his fingers were trembling where they were laced together.

“Do you know how—?” Crowley started before he could stop himself, “Wait, no, I didn’t mean, I’m sorry—”

“I have my guesses,” Aziraphale said, quietly sorrowful. “I’m afraid—” and now he did look at Crowley, his blue eyes blinking back tears. “I’m afraid I was terribly indiscrete for a few years after college.”

“Drugs?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale looked down. “No.”

“Right…” Crowley blew out a breath between his teeth, and then for the life of him, couldn’t figure out what to say next.

“You’re,” Aziraphale swallowed. “You’re the first person I’ve told, Crowley, besides my doctors obviously. The first person ever. Please...please don’t go spreading it around.”

“Twenty years and I’m the first person?” Crowley asked.

Aziraphale nodded.

"Not your...partners?"

"There haven't been any."

“Friends? Your gay friends in DC?” 

A shadow passed over Aziraphale’s face. “No. They aren’t those sort of friends really.” 

“Not even your family—”

“I’m not an idiot Crowley,” Aziraphale snapped, then pressed a hand to his mouth. His blue eyes were glossy with tears. Crowley fought the impulse to stand up from the table, come around to Aziraphale’s chair and gather him into his arms. He had never been able to watch Aziraphale cry with anything like impassivity. But in the odd, stilted air of the kitchen, he didn’t know if such a touch would be welcome, and he worried that it would make Aziraphale feel worse. Instead he pulled a paper napkin from the handmade wooden holder at the center of the table and held it out. Aziraphale took it with a brittle smile that lodged like a shard of glass in Crowley’s chest, used it to dab at his eyes. 

Silence again, longer this time. One of the black eyed susans was a bit worse for wear. Crowley focused on the thin lace of its petals, riddled with insect holes and watched out of the corner of his eye as Aziraphale twisted the napkin in his hands. 

“And you’re…you’re alright? Not...not horribly ill or anything?” As soon as this question occurred to Crowley, he was ashamed that it hadn’t been the first thing he had thought to ask.

“No, I…” Aziraphale let go of the napkin to trace the outline of the patch of sunlight on the tablecloth with one shaking fingertip. “I was very lucky,” he finished eventually, still not looking at Crowley. “I was diagnosed early after I got it. I broke my wrist and they tested me in the emergency room, called me a week later. I knew before I even felt sick, and then just a little while later, a medication that worked came out. I’ve never been terribly ill with it. I’ve often felt guilty, you know, not having been sick like so many other people were just a few years before me.”

“Well that’s bullshit,” Crowley cleared his throat. “Feeling guilty I mean. I’m glad. I’m glad you never got very sick with it. I’m glad you’re alright.”

“Me too,” Aziraphale smiled weak and watery, but he was looking at Crowley properly again. Something soft and ephemeral, like the petals of a cornflower opening in the morning dew, unfurled inside Crowley’s chest. Aziraphale had chosen to tell him. He hadn’t told anyone in twenty years. He’d told Crowley.

“I wanted to tell you last night,” Aziraphale said, softly, astonishment and relief hovering about the crinkles of his eyes. “I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Everything was so perfect. I didn’t want to ruin it.” 

What had he expected? That Crowley would be disgusted? That he would want nothing more to do with Aziraphale now that he knew this little biological detail, this physiological problem that had nothing at all, really, to do with the person he was? The soft part inside Crowley ached just thinking about it, and fast on the heels of that bruising pain came a stab of resentment. _Do you really think so little of me?_

“You haven’t ruined anything,” Crowley said, equally soft, although his heart was still pounding, he was still reeling, only just now beginning to feel out the shape of this new information. “Thank you...thank you for trusting me.” 

Crowley inched his fingers along the gingham tablecloth towards where Aziraphale’s hand rested. All at once, Aziraphale drew his hand away, placed it in his pocket. 

“But of course, you understand now,” Aziraphale said, voice brusque, “why it’s impossible. I don’t want to hurt you Crowley, I can’t. Even though we can’t be together, I hope you’ll still be my friend.”

“Of course,” Crowley said immediately. “Of course.” He meant it too. He had known since he was eighteen that he would be Aziraphale’s friend until the day he died. That, at least, hadn’t changed. 

After that, Crowley lingered in the kitchen with Aziraphale for how long? Half an hour? An hour? The atmosphere became hazy, like the out of focus parts of a dream. 

Crowley remembered the rest of the morning in bits and pieces. Aziraphale’s hands folded in front of him on the table (strong hands, healthy hands, Crowley had always thought, or maybe he only thought it now because—). At some point, Aziraphale stood up to pour iced tea for them both. Watching those bare feet shuffle across the wooden floor boards towards the refrigerator, Crowley was filled with the sickening jolt of realization that even now, even as they sat and talked and tried their best to be normal, it was there inside of him, hurting him, running through the blue delicate veins of his feet, and it had been for twenty years. It had been there in the pulse that fluttered wildly under Crowley’s lips last night. It had been there that very first day even, on the porch—the shards of glass, the bloom of blood in Aziraphale’s hand. 

Aziraphale’s white shirt bunched on his broad back as he raised the pitcher to pour the tea. He looked as strong as ever. But shouldn’t Crowley have noticed somehow? Wouldn’t a real friend have noticed that Aziraphale was different? _They aren’t those sort of friends_ , Aziraphale had said about the men he went to brunch with in DC. Was Crowley any better? 

Crowley had thought that Aziraphale hadn’t changed at all. He had thought that Aziraphale was _happy_. He remembered sitting in the truck after their first meeting, biting back his own regrets about the way life had turned out, remembered thinking, _I’m glad at least one of us got out unscathed_. Only now it turned out that, really, neither of them had. 

Aziraphale turned to hand Crowley his tea and his fingers slipped against Crowley’s on the condensation of the glass. Crowley jerked in surprise at the sudden touch. Aziraphale tracked the motion with his eyes and cringed. _No_ , Crowley wanted to say, _no it’s not about_ — but the words seemed awkward, the wrong shape for his mouth so he said nothing, just clutched the glass to his chest. It was excruciating. 

They drank their tea in silence. Or maybe they had talked? If so, Crowley couldn’t remember what about. The minutes stretched, soft and heavy, like a lump of lead slowly beaten out into wire.

Finally, Aziraphale had stood and said, “Crowley, if it’s alright, could you come back tomorrow for the repairs, I might need...I might need. Some time.” 

“Right, yeah, ‘course,” Crowley said, draining his glass, setting it on the table too loudly. “‘Course, whatever you need—” 

He had wanted to say, _it’s going to be alright_. But would it be alright? Aziraphale had a disease he would never recover from. It was a fact plain and simple on the table between them, sucking up all the air around it like a dry sponge in a bowl of water. Crowley wanted to pull Aziraphale close, not to kiss him, just to hold him; wanted, as he always had, to make it better. (Aziraphale’s hand, warm and pliant in his, as Crowley bent to tape a broken finger to the one next to it, breath coming in clouds in the frosty air of an abandoned church.) 

But Aziraphale was hunched in on himself, looked like he wanted nothing more than to be left alone. He didn’t want Crowley to take care of him now, and anyway, Crowley didn’t know how. 

“—I’ll see you tomorrow,” Crowley finished, helplessly, and then was down the stairs and out the door. 

***

Crowley got back in his truck to drive home but he didn’t start the engine right away. He dug in his pocket for his phone, pushed his glasses up on his forehead and with trembling fingers typed three letters—just three letters, how could they have changed so much between him and Aziraphale—into the search bar. 

_Human Immunodeficiency Virus is a retrovirus that affects CD4+ T cells…_

He squinted at the screen. 

CD4+ was hyperlinked. He clicked on it, pulling up a page from the Centers for Disease Control. 

_A CD4+ T Cell is a type of immune cell and part of the adaptive immune response…_

Adaptive immune response? Crowley hadn’t paid much attention to biology class in high school, and beyond the practical knowledge of plant crossing and grafting, had barely revisited the life sciences since. His knowledge in other realms was mostly practical too—use condoms, don’t trust strangers, hands only if you’re really trying to play it safe. Clearly there was a lot to catch up on. 

He didn’t want to stay too long in Aziraphale’s drive, sure that he was watching from the upstairs window, waiting for him to pull away. He put the phone on the seat next to him and started the truck. 

In his younger days, Crowley had known enough to be cautious at clubs, known enough to stay up late worrying some nights that he had been less careful than he ought, but infection had mostly been an abstract concern. The images on TV of men marching in the streets of New York and San Francisco or wasting away in hospital rooms on either coast had moved him but in a distant sort of way, like the plight of a second cousin once removed. Now, Crowley wished he had paid more attention. A great deal had changed since those days, hadn’t it? People with HIV lived full lives now. They were in relationships. People with HIV had sex, even. Surely they must? There was no reason for Aziraphale to treat him like this, to deny them both something they wanted, not unless—Crowley’s hand flew unconsciously up to touch the side of his face again. But Aziraphale had looked so earnest when he had said _it's not you_.

Even so, he felt a twinge of entirely unjustified resentment. Aziraphale was the one who didn’t want to bring up the past. He had practically begged it of Crowley at their first encounter in the bookshop weeks ago now. And Crowley had agreed to let it lie, no matter how desperately he might want answers about how and why everything fell apart that August.

Aziraphale didn’t want to live in the past and yet here they were again, just like when they were eighteen; Crowley asking and Aziraphale denying, Aziraphale holding him at arms length for his own good, Aziraphale saying, “I don’t want to hurt you.” Crowley started his truck and pulled away from the bookshop. _Too late for that_ , he thought. It wasn’t fair of Aziraphale to decide what was safe for Crowley. 

Being pushed away and told it was for his own protection stung horribly. It stung also to think of Aziraphale being—what had he said?— _terribly indiscrete_ —for years when in high school he had played hot and cold with Crowley’s affection, would take pleasure in his hand when it was offered, or his mouth on one memorable occasion, only to deny it had happened as soon as it was over. While Crowley had spent his twenties and thirties on farms up and down the state, breaking his back with the seasons, finding relief in a friendly stranger’s hand maybe once or twice a year in a bar bathroom or a hay loft, Aziraphale had, evidently, been fucking. 

Crowley thought of this parade of imagined men, for whom Aziraphale had not been afraid and to whom he had not denied pleasure, and swung the wheel to pull over on the side of the road on the outskirts of town. Hot, unwarranted jealousy rose up in his throat at all these faceless, nameless men; men who had Aziraphale, or perhaps were had by him—Crowley did not even know what Aziraphale preferred and this, too, stung. 

Cornflowers bloomed in the gravel on the side of the road, a blue that existed nowhere else in the world except perhaps Aziraphale’s eyes. He took deep breaths. The resentment eased gradually, gave way to gnawing hurt and a creeping guilt. Perhaps the dream from last night had lingered, because Crowley found himself thinking again of flight. The soaring joy he felt at the controls, the buoyant lift, the sense that life was full of mysterious and wonderful twists and turns, that it was never ever _too late_. 

While Crowley had been learning to fly at the little airstrip in Morgantown, what had Aziraphale been up to? Crowley tried to remember his exact words. _I’ve never been terribly ill_. With Aziraphale, who always talked around things rather than saying them straight out, such a sentence could mean many things. _I’ve never been terribly ill_. He hadn’t said, _I’ve never been ill_. How sick _had_ he been? 

Crowley’s jealousy shifted sideways, spiraled nauseatingly into sorrow. The faceless, attractive young men in Crowley’s imagination faded into rail thin wraiths, light as birds, with the same haunted, skeletal look of Agnes or his mother at the very end. Crowley’s hands shook in his lap. A vision arose, sudden and unexpected, of a news program he had seen once, years and years ago, a report from inside an AIDS ward which he had watched with a detached sort of sadness. He remembered the camera sweeping over dying young men, cradled in their lovers’ arms, zooming in as one man tenderly spoon fed another. Crowley blinked rapidly, behind his glasses, tried to stop the flow of thoughts, but his mind was racing ahead, already constructing an image of what Aziraphale might have looked like, lying on one of those narrow hospital beds, thin and wasting away. It was wrong—Aziraphale ought to be plump and solid, the rooted tree about which Crowley’s vine clung. _You're the first person I’ve told_ , Aziraphale had said, _the first person ever_. Aziraphale hadn’t had anyone to cradle him in his arms. He hadn’t had anyone to spoon feed him soup. _I would have come_ , Crowley wanted to say to the imagined Aziraphale twenty years younger, tossing and turning on hospital sheets. _I would have held you like that. I would have been there with you in the hospital. Why didn’t you call me?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Detailed CW for the chapter: In this chapter, Aziraphale reveals to Crowley that he acquired HIV twenty years ago. This chapter begins an arc of several chapters that deal with this revelation. These chapters are mostly about living with HIV as a chronic disease, but the final paragraph of this chapter deals with AIDS death.  
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> While I do not have HIV, this story does draw extensively from my personal experience. I wanted to write about HIV as a chronic illness and HIV in a rural setting, because these are two aspects of the HIV experience that I think are underrepresented in fiction but very much a part of real people’s lives. I am also excited to write about Aziraphale and Crowley navigating what it might mean to be a serodiscordant couple. 
> 
> On that note, I want to acknowledge that the characters’ actions and interactions surrounding HIV in this story are not meant to be instructive or ideal. My version of Aziraphale has significant internalized shame about his diagnosis, related to his overall character arc and longstanding feelings of being “different.” What Aziraphale here considers “too risky” or shameful is not necessarily what I (the author) would consider to be risky or shameful. Put another way, if your immediate reaction to this chapter is: _but you can be positive and still be in a relationship with someone who’s not_ —I know, but Aziraphale and Crowley don’t. Not yet. Don’t worry, we will get there.


	14. Valentines Day, 1985: Crowley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for being an excellent beta! 
> 
> CW: unhealthy drinking, non graphic vomiting

The thrum of music all around, shaking the foundations of the house. The roar of drunken, happy voices. Crowley felt horribly out of place. He stood in the corner, sweating in the brown wool suit he had borrowed from the back of Luke’s closet, sipped some kind of artificial punchy drink out of a plastic cup, and wondered why he had bothered to come.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale gasped, rushing over, cup in hand. He was drunk, delighted, and absolutely radiant in a rented tuxedo and bowtie. “You’re here! You made it after all!”

Ah yes, that was why.

(“You aren’t going?” Aziraphale had said earlier that week, as Crowley lounged in a windowsill on the third floor of the bookshop. It was too cold, now, to meet outdoors so they had taken to Agnes’ shop instead. It was riskier, certainly, but hardly anyone came here. Privately, Crowley was glad of the change, felt it was worth it just for the sight of Aziraphale out of his winter coat, worth it for Aziraphale’s bare forearms and the way his t-shirt clung to his chest, and for the shine in his eyes when he pointed out the latest pile of mouldering old tomes Agnes was going to put him to work restoring. 

“Everyone goes to the Valentines Day dance.” Aziraphale pouted.

“I don’t.”

“Too cool for it are you?” Aziraphale teased. “Worried they won’t play any music you like?”

“Not my scene,” Crowley muttered, because he couldn’t tell Aziraphale he didn’t have the fifteen dollars to spend on a ticket.

“Well,” Aziraphale said, still looking a bit put out, “at least come to the afterparty at Sandy’s.”

“With the football team? Definitely not.”

“Sandy’s dad is getting half a dozen kegs delivered, and his uncle makes moonshine. Everyone will be so drunk they won’t care.”

“I’ll think about,” Crowley muttered.

“Oh, would you?” Aziraphale said and smiled at him with the devastating brightness of a thousand suns, and Crowley knew it was hopeless, knew he would go to the party just to have that warmth turned on him once again.)

“You clean up real nice,” Aziraphale said, leaning in close to be heard over the noise of the music, “I like your—” he waved a hand in Crowley’s general direction, clumsy and loose. “—tie...thingy.”

Crowley’s hand fluttered to his throat, then back down to fist in the pocket of the loose fitting trousers. He was wearing a bolo tie from the ladies section of the thrift store downtown—a dark, chunky plastic jewel set into a silver frame. He had bought it because he thought it looked like coal, or rather, the way someone who had never been underground thought coal ought to look. 

“Thanks,” he said, the word awkward in his mouth, tasting of kool aid and vodka. 

(He didn’t say, _I’m wearing it because I put on Luke’s suit this afternoon and when I looked in the mirror I didn’t recognize myself._ He didn’t say, _next time invite me somewhere I can come in lipstick and eyeshadow._ He didn’t say, _I’m wearing it for me, but I’m here for you._ ) 

The tie was pulled tight, nestled in the hollow of Crowley’s neck. Aziraphale reached out, curled his fingers around the dark jewel, there in the living room of Sandy’s house. The backs of his fingers brushed against Crowley’s throat. Crowley nearly forgot how to breathe.

Aziraphale ran the bolo up and down the leather laces, stepped even closer into Crowely’s space until they were very nearly breathing the same air. Aziraphale’s breath smelled like whiskey and beer. Crowley looked over the top of his blonde curls in alarm. Sandy was doing a keg stand in the kitchen while half the football team cheered; people milled about in the living room dancing and talking; there were two couples making out on the couch; the lights were dim, no one was paying them any attention.

“Are you drunk yet?” Aziraphale asked against the shell of Crowley’s ear. 

Crowley shivered. “No.”

“Well, you should be, I already am.” Aziraphale leaned in closer, swayed against Crowley, and his hand moved from the tie to drape loosely over Crowley’s shoulders, joined by his other arm, still clutching the plastic cup. “It would be fun, don’t you think, to be drunk together?”

Crowley opened and shut his mouth, glanced again around the room in alarm. “I—” he said, “this isn’t—”

“I’m out past curfew,” Aziraphale said in a stage whisper as though imparting a secret. “But I can’t go home.” His eyes were overly bright, his tie was askew, light blond hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. “I never party. I’m the good—” he hiccupped. “—good one. Gabe’s the wild one. Dad’ll kill me if he sees me like this.”

“Christ,” Crowley hissed in frustration, trying to disentangle himself from the warm, distracting press of Aziraphale’s body. “You’re not thinking at all. You’ve got to sober up.”

“Don’t want to,” Aziraphale said mulishly. “Like it like this. Like it with you.” And then Aziraphale swayed towards Crowley again, stepped close like they were slow dancing together, close enough that the side of his cheek brushed against Crowley’s jaw. For a brief few seconds, Crowley closed his eyes and let his hands travel to the corded muscle of Azirpahlae’s lower back, press there, press them together. This corner of the room was dark. Crowley allowed himself, for a moment, to think about what it would be like to be in another sort of place, in another town, where no one knew his name or Aziraphale’s, where Crowley could walk Aziraphale a few steps back further into the shadows or press him down onto the armchair in the corner—

With an effort, Crowley pulled away. They were in Eden, not in some imagined other place, and Aziraphale was in no fit state to be making declarations.

In fact, Aziraphale seemed to be in no fit state for anything at all. The press of his chest against Crowley’s had slowly transformed into a full body lean. He was swaying on his feet, held up only by his arms around Crowley’s neck. 

Crowley delicately ducked out of the embrace, removed the half-full cup that was still clutched in Aziraphale’s hand. He sniffed at the contents and winced as the rubbing alcohol burn of something homemade hit his nose. He set the cup down on the end table next to the sofa. Aziraphale made a weak noise of complaint, but didn’t try to take it back.

“Come on,” Crowley said, hefting one of Aziraphale’s arms over his shoulder. “I think...I think you’ve had enough. We’re getting you home.”

“I told you I can’t go—”

“No, not your home, idiot, mine.”

***

Aziraphale sighed as Crowley settled him in the passenger seat of his own truck. “Is it this easy for you all the time?”

“Is what easy?” Crowley asked absently, checking over the pockets of Aziraphale’s suit pants, retrieving the keys to the truck. Crowley frowned. He was sure Aziraphale was missing something. Hadn’t he had a backpack and a jacket when he set off from school this afternoon?

“It’s so difficult, all the time. I’m always thinking…” Aziraphale swallowed, looked briefly as though he might be sick. “…thinking, am I doing it right, am I pretending right but you—you don’t pretend at all. You don’t care what people think.”

Aziraphale was sprawled out in the passenger seat in a slouched posture that was entirely unlike him. Crowley ought to have appreciated it—he had been trying to get Aziraphale to relax for months now—instead it looked wrong. He didn’t look happy. He looked, Crowley thought, a shiver racing down his spine that couldn’t be attributed to the cold winter air, the way Luke did when he passed out on the couch after a shift. 

“Didn’t you bring something with you today?” Crowley asked, shaking the thought from his head, trying to return to the problem at hand. “Thought you were going to stop by Agnes’ shop before the dance. Did you leave your backpack there?”

Aziraphale scrunched his nose up, concentrating hard, then exhaled and relaxed back into the seat. “‘M sure it’s somewhere.” 

Crowley looked around. He didn’t see Aziraphale’s backpack, not on the floorboards or in the jump seat or in the truck bed.

“I’ve got to go back inside, stay in the truck ok.”

Aziraphale flashed him a lazy thumbs up.

Crowely shut the door of the truck, pocketed the keys and turned back to the noise of the party. 

***

When Crowley returned, Aziraphale was snoozing gently in the passenger seat. He didn’t wake up as Crowley opened the driver’s side door and climbed in, but made a snuffling sort of sound and turned over to lean against the window. Crowley watched him for a long time before he started the truck. His cheeks were flushed from drinking and sweat had curled his white blonde hair about his ears like a halo. If Aziraphale hadn’t just been drunk out of his mind at a shit houseparty in a shit town in a shit state, Crowley might have even said he looked angelic. 

It had started to snow, large wet flakes that stuck to the road and danced in front of the headlights as Crowley drove. It was already beginning to cover the ground when Crowley pulled the truck into the gravel patch behind the trailer. Crowley hoped the snow would stick to the doors too, cover the bright Wright Mines logo—a pickaxe crossed with a feather—that was emblazoned on the side. 

Luke was in the mines for once in his goddamn life, wouldn’t be back until tomorrow afternoon. Bee was out at some boy’s house or another, was going to work at the Burger King tomorrow and probably wouldn't stop in at home beforehand. It was as safe as it would ever be to have Aziraphale here, and yet it was a risk. A risk Crowley ought not to have taken. But he couldn’t have left Aziraphale there to pass out on the couch in some stranger's house, with people he thought were friends, but who hadn’t noticed him leave. 

Crowley shook Aziraphale’s shoulder. He startled awake, then looked around in apparent confusion. 

“We’re here,” Crowley said, “better come inside.”

The entryway of the mobile home was frigid. Aziraphale, drunk as he was, scraped his feet on the welcome mat, tried to knock the snow off his nice shoes. This reflexive politeness clenched in Crowley’s chest like a fist.

“Look, I’m sorry there’s no heat right now, but it’s ok, I’ve got a lot of blankets, come on through here—”

Crowley led Aziraphale through the darkened kitchen, pulling him along by his hand. Aziraphale stumbled along after him, silent as Crowley hustled him through the narrow hallway into his bedroom. He shut the door after them, turned on a light.

“Sit down, erm, wherever,” Crowley muttered, although there was really only one place to sit—the bed, which yawned behind them like a chasm. 

Aziraphale didn’t sit. He swayed where he stood and then blurted out, suddenly. “I can’t stand it. Crowley I just can’t fucking stand it.”

Crowley looked around at the room and cringed, tiled ceiling, dirty shag carpet, plywood dresser with the handles falling off, threadbare sheets and wool blankets that came from the military surplus store in town, all illuminated in dingy yellow by the single bulb of an ancient bedside lamp. It had been a terrible idea to bring Aziraphale here. Of course he would hate it, of course he wouldn’t understand. How could he?

“Look, I’m really sorry about the heat, there’s nothing I can do about it, heat pump is broke. I’m sure you’ll be warmer once we get you under these blankets, then you can go home tomorrow as soon as you’re sober, we’ll forget all about this—”

“Not what I— “ Aziraphale slurred, swayed. “N’ what I mean. I mean this town. The mine, the whole fucking place. Gets so bad sometimes, I think I can’t breathe. No one knows what it’s like.”

Crowley thought of tunnels underground, so low that you couldn’t stand upright, thought of the smell of wet limestone and rock dust, the walls closing in. “I know what it’s like.”

“Tha’s what I’m say-saying” Aziraphale muttered, then sat down abruptly on the bed as if his legs were going to give out. “You get it. You’re the only one. We’re the only ones.”

The room was very quiet. Very cold. Crowley could see the white puffs of Aziraphale’s breath in the air.

“Probably not the only ones,” Crowley said eventually. “I told you Hastur and—”

“You’re the only one who matters,” Aziraphale said, sudden and fierce. It lanced through Crowley like a bolt. But—

But—

Aziraphale was very drunk. He didn’t know what he was saying. He ought to sleep it off before he said something he would regret. He’d wake up clear-headed, want nothing more than to forget this conversation ever happened, desperate again for Gabriel and his father’s approval. 

“You ought to take off your shoes,” Crowley said. “And your tie. You won’t want to sleep in those.”

Aziraphale bent towards his laces, then straightened quickly. “Oh no, can’t do that. Gonna be sick—”

“Well don’t do it on the carpet.” Crowley hurriedly passed Aziraphale a trash can, knelt to untie his shoes. Aziraphale held the trash can in his lap, but didn’t use it. Instead when Crowley looked up, Aziraphale was looking back down at him, a strange heat in those blue eyes, even clouded as they were with drink. Crowley pulled off first one shoe, then the other.

“Help me w’ my tie?” Aziraphale asked, gesturing clumsily towards his neck.

Crowley swallowed, bent towards Aziraphale, reached for the knot. Aziraphale let the trash can tumble to the floor, covered Crowley’s hands with his own. “Don’t you also…?” Aziraphale said with a desperate sort of drunken intensity. “Don’t you also want…?”

“I do,” Crowley said, the admission almost painful as it left him, stitches plucked out of a wound that hadn’t yet closed. “You’ve got to know I do. But we can’t do anything about—”

Aziraphale surged up and pressed his mouth to Crowley’s, ardent and clumsy and tasting of sour beer. One of his hands dropped from Crowley’s and skittered down his chest, past his belt, found him through the cloth. Shock raced down Crowley’s spine—Aziraphale was never bold like this, Aziraphale in his right mind would never have—but Crowley’s hips were already moving, meeting the eager press of Aziraphale’s hand. He thought he could lose himself in the way it curled around the shape of him, the way Aziraphale’s own breath stuttered as he began to stroke through the ugly fabric of the suit—

It took everything Crowley had to pull away from Aziraphale’s lips and fingers.

“No?” Aziraphale asked, eyes puzzled in the dingy light. “I thought—”

“Not like this,” Crowley said, cursing himself and whatever it was that wouldn’t let him just take what was offered for once in his life. “You’ll hate me in the morning.”

“I won’t hate you, I promise, I’ll make you feel so good. Crowley I want— I want to put my hand on it, I want to put my mouth on it, I keep thinking about it, I’d even let you—oh fuck, I’m really, actually, gonna be sick—”

Crowley was ready, had been ready, ever since Aziraphale had tried and failed to take off his own shoes. Now he held up the trash can like an offering between them, rubbed Aziraphale’s back as he retched and shook.

“It’s alright, it’s alright.” Crowley murmured. “Feel better now?”

Aziraphale nodded miserably.

“Let’s go to the bathroom, get you cleaned up.”

Crowley sheppard Aziraphale to the bathroom, helped him out of his tie and coat and shirt and pants until he stood, shivering and vulnerable in just his boxers and undershirt and stocking feet on the cold floor.

“Here, rinse your mouth out, then you can use my toothbrush, ok?”

Crowley dealt with the mess in the trash can while Aziraphale gulped down sips of water, fumbled with the toothpaste.

“I’m so sorry,” Aziraphale whispered as they made their way back to Crowley’s bedroom.

“It’s alright,” Crowley said, quite sincerely. With Luke the way he was, Crowley had become an expert at cleaning all sorts of messes. “Do you feel like you’re gonna be sick again?” he asked, drawing back the covers for Aziraphale to get into his bed.

Aziraphale shook his head. “Don’ think so.”

“Ok if I stay with you to make sure?”

Aziraphale nodded so Crowley set the trash can down beside the bed and hesitated for a long moment before he stripped off his own suit and slid under the covers too. He lay on his back on the bed, stared at the stain on the ceiling and tried not to let his legs tangle with Aziraphale’s. He thought of airplanes and thrust, weight, lift, and drag and the clear blue of the sky and only very gradually did he become aware of the bed shaking beneath him. Aziraphale was turned away from him, sobbing almost noiselessly, shoulders moving with the effort of holding back the sound of tears. Crowley lay there, paralyzed for a moment in his own bed, then slowly curled towards Aziraphale’s side, laid one hand as gently as he could on his hip. Aziraphale’s breath hitched; he leaned back into Crowley’s chest. Crowley let his arm fall around Aziraphale’s waist, pressed his cheek into Aziraphale’s hair. Aziraphale began to sob harder, his whole body shaking against Crowley’s. Crowley tried to withdraw, but Aziraphale covered the hand that was around his waist with one of his own.

“Don’t go,” he whispered, “please.”

Crowley stayed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another somewhat sad chapter I’m afraid, but the next few chapters after this will be very soft indeed. 
> 
> The next update will likely be a few weeks from now because it’s an important chapter and I want to get it right! In the meantime, please take a look at this incredibly lovely fan art by Ness on tumblr. Please do yourself a favor and [ check it out!](https://nessieshirak.tumblr.com/post/638479229405806592/based-on-the-false-and-the-fair-by-princip1914)
> 
> I'm still catching up on comments, but I really appreciate everyone who has stopped by to say they are enjoying the story. Thanks for sticking with it & going on this journey with me!


	15. Runway Behind Us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has some heavy things in it, but ends up at a happier place. It’s only going to get softer (for a while anyway) from here. 
> 
> Thanks again to [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for all the help, and especially for betaing this chapter over the holidays! 
> 
> CW: Unhealthy alcohol use, allusions to medical experiences, diagnostics, & treatments, sex as a coping mechanism, internalized shame about sexuality & past sexual experiences, explicit discussion of sexual acts.

The door slammed shut downstairs. Minutes later, the engine of a truck turned over and the noise of its tires on gravel faded away into the distance. But Aziraphale was not watching as it pulled away. Instead, he was running a bath. 

He put a record on Agnes’ antique phonograph and listened as the notes of classical piano rose over the comforting hiss of the machine. He lit the sage and bergamot candle. He dipped his fingers in the bath, adjusted the temperature, and then removed his clothes and folded them neatly, laying them out on the windowsill. He eased into the warm water, grateful for it despite the humid, summer air in the little apartment.

Only then, in the cradle of the warm water and sage scented air, with the strains of Schubert drifting in from the bedroom, did Aziraphale allow himself to consider the disastrous past hour. 

“I’m trying to tell you that I have HIV,” Aziraphale had said, and he had felt the world fracture, a tectonic shift beneath him.

(The flash of yellow eyes, the slam of the cage door, the whine of the cable, winching Crowley down into the earth. Aziraphale walked up the grey hill covered with coal dust back towards the administration building. He checked his watch. The descent took seven minutes. The second hand ticked by. Six minutes. Six and a half minutes. Aziraphale breathed a sigh of relief, it would be alright. And then—

The last few notes of _America the Beautiful_ , sung by the Eden County elementary school choir, rang out in the still air. The gaze of the crowd was fixed on the peak of Eden Mountain in the distance, the pile of explosives wired around it, roped off by security fencing—a publicity stunt more than anything else; the real work would be done by dump trucks over the weeks and months ahead. Gabriel reached behind the podium to pull out a comically large red button.

“Count down with me folks,” he said, and the crowd chanted the numbers, and then— 

An unremarkable Saturday evening in 1995, a Shostakovich opera on the record player as Aziraphale got ready to go out—he would never be able to listen to _Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk_ again. He unbuttoned the cuff of a shirt to slip his arm through, wrist still in a cast from when he had broken it a week earlier falling down a set of stairs after a long night out. The distant, shrill ring of the phone, nothing out of the ordinary and then—) 

These earthquakes were all discrete, separate moments in time. They were unrelated, and also, simultaneously, identical to one another, part of a chain of events in a life that it seemed to Aziraphale, wallowing as he was in self-pity and luke-warm water, marked only for destruction. And in that chain was also, now, the look of utter shock that had bloomed on Crowley’s face when the words fell out of Aziraphale’s mouth— _I’m trying to tell you that I have HIV_ —the little flinch Crowley had tried so hard to hide when Aziraphale’s hands brushed his on the glass of tea.

Aziraphale sunk deeper into the warm embrace of the bath.

What had he been thinking? That he and Crowley could go back to the way things had been? Easily slip back into their high school selves, like slipping on an old and worn jacket, unearthed in the back of the closet after having been missing for years? What a foolish thing to have thought. And yet it had seemed so possible. Aziraphale had been deluding himself. All that time on Crowley’s farm seemed, now, after the stark earth-shattering force of Aziraphale’s confession, somehow unreal. They belonged to a better world, where Aziraphale had made different choices all through his twenties and thirties. Where there was, after everything, still some possibility of salvage. 

(Aziraphale’s first job after college had been in demolition. He spent his days in a grey office building in Alexandria, Virginia parsing destruction into quantifiable steps—how to tear down a parking garage so it could be replaced with another, larger one; how to tear up a set of streetcar lines so that the highway could pass through; how to dynamite a public housing complex so the city could sell the land for more lucrative development. The explosions blurred into one another, merged with other, more personal, catastrophes. 

When the workday was over he took the metro home to a featureless high rise apartment with blank white walls and then when he couldn’t stand it anymore—or when he had a drink or two or several—he went out again in search of a distraction from the wreckage of his days. 

At first it had felt freeing, and then had become routine but necessary, like scratching an itch. It had never been fun. Not since—

He had lost track of how many men he had slept with, but when he touched himself, he still thought of Crowley.

His job had been in demolition. He hadn’t known, then, how much harder it was to rebuild something than to tear it down.)

He thought he might feel lighter, now that this secret of twenty years was out in the open, but he only felt numb. Numb in his fingers and toes as he always was in the mornings. The early antiretrovirals had been vile, burn-the-village-and-salt-the-earth-afterwards sort of drugs, but he was grateful they had kept him alive. A little tingling here, nerve pain there, was a small price to pay for continued existence. But the numbness was spreading, despite the warm water. Aziraphale felt it inside his chest too, like a bad head cold starting, like he’d taken a rough tackle to the ribs. He wished he hadn’t said anything to Crowley. But he couldn’t have kept up such silence. Crowley wanted. Aziraphale had seen it in his face, felt it in the hands that had clutched at his belt last night. And Aziraphale had been weak; he had allowed himself to want too. He had kissed Crowley. 

(Who was the last person Aziraphale had kissed before Crowley? He didn’t remember. Kisses blended together, slipped away into the dizzying haze of time and alcohol; subsumed into other, filthier intersections of mouths and bodies. 

Back home in Eden there was one way of saying things: let me take you to the homecoming dance, give you my varsity jacket, then maybe later in the back of my truck or under the bleachers—

In the smoky bars around Dupont Circle, there was another way of speaking, altogether different but no less codified. Aziraphale’s degree had been in engineering, but he had always been good at learning languages. 

"Darling," he might say, walking with a little extra wiggle in his step to a thin, wiry man who had been eyeing him from across the room. "If you're going to look, you ought to let me buy you a drink."

A certain kind of man was attracted to his manners, his formal dress, to all the things that made him seem _country_. Aziraphale leaned into it when he wanted to, used it to his advantage, affected an exaggerated version of his natural accent that he never used at work. Sometimes the men asked him about his upbringing afterwards and he had made the mistake once of telling the truth, of saying, _my family owns a coal mine in West Virginia_. He didn’t have to say the rest of it— _I grew up in a McMansion not whatever quaint cottage you’re picturing; I’ve never farmed or cowboyed a day in my life; my father donated enough money to Reagan that he got invited to a private dinner at the White House; I voted for him, too, before I knew better_ —to realize the illusion was shattered. No one wanted that version of Aziraphale, least of all himself.) 

Aziraphale sat in the bath until the water got cold and his fancy candles drowned themselves in their own wax, regretting all of his life decisions. Then he hauled himself out of the clawfoot tub and began to put himself back together again. 

He dried off with the fluffy new towels he had bought and applied a cocoa butter lotion. Boxers, undershirt, slacks, a button down. A favorite velveteen waistcoat he had found at a quaint thrift shop in Havre-de-Grace (he smoothed it down after buttoning it just to feel the soft give of the fabric). His pocket watch. A tartan bow tie. 

He looked in the mirror and was astounded to find that he looked the same as he had before Crowley had arrived this morning. Perhaps a bit flushed in the cheeks from the bath, a bit pruny about the fingers, but no other changes. He didn’t feel the same. He felt split open. But he looked the same. 

He had told someone and he was still here. He was still standing. 

And then, in a rush, Aziraphale remembered all the things he had convinced himself hadn’t happened—the fervent way Crowley had said, _I’m glad you never got very sick with it_ , and then later, _you haven’t ruined anything_ , and most importantly, _of course, of course we’ll still be friends_. 

Aziraphale let out a long, shaking breath and brushed his hands down the soft front of his worn waistcoat again. It was alright. They were still friends. Crowley hadn’t abandoned him. 

He left the bathroom and headed downstairs to keep organizing and inventorying the books. _He hasn’t abandoned you_ , he thought over and over like a mantra, as he entered titles and copyright dates into the bookshop’s ancient computer. _He hasn’t abandoned you._ Aziraphale tried his best to ignore the small, unshakeable thought that trailed in its wake. _But if he knew the whole truth of thirty years ago, don’t you think he would?_

***

Crowley was back the next day. Aziraphale’s hand trembled as he held out the second cup of coffee, but Crowley took it without hesitation as though nothing had changed. 

“Think I’ll work on that mouldy drywall on the first floor today,” Crowley said. 

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, swept along on a wave of relief. “Thank you my dear, that would be lovely.” 

“You’re welcome,” Crowley said, and then hesitated for just a second too long, gaze inscrutable behind the ever-present glasses. “But you don’t need to thank me. It’s nothing really.” 

“All the same,” Aziraphale said. 

There was another long pause, and then Crowley snorted and took a gulp of his coffee. “It’s just drywall, Aziraphale.” 

Crowley disappeared into the back of the shop. Aziraphale let out the breath he had been holding. Crowley hadn’t abandoned him. They could go on as they had—no kiss, no personal revelations—it could be like it had been, easy and friendly, but this time with the borders of their friendship clearly mapped out. No misunderstandings. 

Only, at the end of the day, after Crowley had packed up his box of tools and washed his hands in the downstairs bathroom, he didn’t leave right away. He came to hover by the register, hands in his pockets.

“I’ve got something to ask you,” he said.

Aziraphale swallowed. He was updating the inventory spreadsheet. He pressed enter on the title he was typing in, set the book down on the register. “Alright.”

Crowley hovered, vibrated with some sort of suppressed anxiety. “Upstairs?” He asked eventually.

“Of course,” Aziraphale said, heart sinking, and led the way.

In the kitchen, Crowley did not sit down. He paced back and forth on the worn wood floor, hands in his pockets. Aziraphale had a sudden vision of Crowley pacing like this when Agnes had told him that she was sick, then he shook his head to clear it from his eyes. HIV was not cancer, it was not a death sentence, no matter what he might have thought those first awful moments with the phone pressed to his ear. It wasn’t a death sentence, not anymore. Aziraphale leaned back against the counter, trying not to fiddle with his watch chain or ring, and waited. He didn’t have to wait long. 

“So I went to the clinic in Morgantown,” Crowley blurted, whirling to face Aziraphale. 

“Ah,” Aziraphale said, mildly, and let his nails bite into his palms so that he didn’t reach to twist his ring. 

“I did a bunch of research first, looked into things, I didn’t know much about—well, I know a lot more now than I did yesterday and I guess I should start by saying I’m sorry.” 

Aziraphale blinked. “What?” 

“I’m sorry. It can’t have...can’t have been easy to tell me and I don’t know if I reacted well. I—” Crowley hung his head towards his boots. “I should have asked about your health, before—instead of—all that other stuff.” 

“It’s alright,” Aziraphale muttered stiffly. 

Crowley nodded. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, like I said and—” he broke off and started pacing again. Aziraphale watched Crowley’s boots as they clicked away across the wood floor and then back towards him. Watched the sway of Crowley’s hips. He wondered if Crowley knew he looked _like that_ when he walked. He must. But this wasn’t any kind of seduction. Crowley was clearly chewing on something, trying to get up the nerve to say it out loud. 

“I suppose it’s best if I just show you,” Crowley said eventually, and pulled a small bottle out of his pocket, tossed it on the table, then flung himself into the chair opposite where Aziraphale was standing. Aziraphale picked it up, turned it over slowly in his hand. It was a medication bottle. Aziraphale was familiar with the name.

Aziraphale’s face burned. “Oh Crowley, I—this is very kind, thank you, but I have no trouble getting my medications. I’ve got a doctor who I’ve seen for years, since I was diagnosed actually, she manages everything—”

“It’s not for you.” Crowley cut him off. “It’s for me.”

“But Crowley you don’t have—”

“No,” Crowley’s voice was rough. He wasn’t looking at Aziraphale. “I don’t, that’s the point. This is for prevention.”

The bottle in Aziraphale’s hand weighed nearly nothing at all. He felt dizzy. “Prevention for what, for if we....if you and I….”

Crowley passed a hand over his face. The sunglasses clattered to the table. “Christ, I’ve gone about this all wrong, haven’t I. What I mean is, what I meant to say is—” he dropped his hand and his eye darted to Aziraphale’s face. “I don’t...I don’t care about the HIV. No, no, I mean, I do care. I’m sorry that it happened. I’m sorry you’re living with this, I know it’s caused you a lot of trouble. But I’ve thought a lot about it and I just...I don’t think it needs to stop us being…being together, not unless you want it to.”

“You’ve thought about it for twenty four hours,” Aziraphale said. His voice sounded cold and far away. In fact, everything was far away—the table, Crowley, the warm overhead lights in the kitchen. Outrage buzzed over his skin, the turbulent surface of a shallow sea where grief and guilt and all sorts of other things Aziraphale didn’t dare examine lurked. He focused on the waves instead. How dare Crowley offer up something Aziraphale wanted so desperately in such a light, cheeky way, as though it was nothing, as though one day was all it took to solve the problems of the past twenty years? How dare Crowley act like it was easy? How dare Crowley demand that Aziraphale agree, just like that, to putting him in harm's way yet again? “You haven’t thought about it at all,” he said, setting the bottle down on the table with a click that sounded in his ears louder than it should have, the finality of a key turning in the lock. 

“I have though,” Crowley craned his neck back to look Aziraphale in the eye. His golden gaze was compassionate, but underneath the compassion a flame flickered. Aziraphale realized with a surge of petty triumph that Crowley was frustrated too, although hiding it well. “Can I tell you something my flight instructor taught me?” 

Aziraphale folded his arms in front of his chest. “Go ahead.” 

“You know what the three most useless things in flying are? Fuel left on the ground, altitude above you, and runway behind you. If you mess up a takeoff, it doesn’t matter how long the airport runway was to start with, what matters is how much runway you have still in front of you to either try to take off again or land the plane if you have a problem in the air.” 

“Makes sense,” Aziraphale said, unsure what this anecdote about flying had to do with anything. 

“Well, I figure,” Crowley said slowly, “all this stuff—your...diagnosis, my eye, the way both our lives have gone since...since high school really—it’s all just runway behind us. No use dwelling on it, won’t help to rehash it now. All that matters is the amount of runway we’ve got left. And there’s a lot of it. Neither of us is even fifty.” He picked up the bottle of pills and turned it over in his long fingers. “Aziraphale, there’s still time. To figure things out, to try being together again, to live the kind of lives we want to live.” 

Aziraphale’s grip on his frustration wobbled. He could feel the dark, hopeless waters of grief slipping over him. He tried, vainly to swim back up to the surface, to anchor himself to the fond exasperation verging on arousal that he always felt around Crowley, but he still felt like he was drowning. 

“Maybe for you,” he said, lips numb. “Not for me.” 

Crowley’s nostrils flared. “So you’re just going to swear off of relationships forever, is that it? Just because you have this,” he paused, struggled for the right words, landed on, “….medical condition?”

“No,” Aziraphale said too quickly.

“Ah,” Crowley said, the banked frustration crackling in his tone. “Just going to swear off me then. I see.”

“Crowley, I—” Aziraphale’s breath hitched. On a wild, foolish impulse, he crossed the room and covered Crowley’s hand, still clenched around the bottle of pills, with his own. For all his bravado, Crowley’s long fingers were trembling. “I don’t want to hurt you,” Aziraphale pleaded softly. “I can’t risk it, you’re too—”

“—too what?” Crowley snarled.

“—too important.” Aziraphale finished. “I couldn’t bear to think I’d hurt you—”

Crowley snatched his hand back, crammed the pills into his pocket again. “I thought we were past this. You kept saying that in high school too.”

“Yes, and look what happened,” Aziraphale snapped. “You got hurt.”

Crowley reared back, one hand flying to the injured side of his face. Aziraphale realized immediately that he had gone too far.

“Crowley, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I didn’t mean—”

“No, it’s ok,” Crowley cut him off. His face was pale, but he didn’t sound angry anymore, just hurt, and a bit tired. “Aziraphale it’s ok, I...I understand why you’re worried for me. I get it. I’m just saying that I think—” he swallowed visibly. “I think if we wanted to be together, it would be alright. The things that happened in the past, they’re over and done with. Runway behind us, all of it. The doctors in Morgantown told me it’s safe, well, as safe as anything can be. It would be alright. But I get that it’s still hard. I promised not to rush you. But will you—will you think about it?”

Aziraphale, to his own astonishment and against all of his better judgment, found himself saying, “yes, I will.”

***

Crowley didn’t come back to the bookshop all week after that. He had called to say something about it being a busy week at the orchard, but Aziraphale knew, although Crowley hadn’t said it directly, that he was being given space to _think it through_. To make up his mind. It was a nice gesture, very considerate of Crowley not to hover, not to put pressure on him, not to _rush_ him. It was very considerate. It was too bad, really, that Aziraphale had already made up his mind quite decisively. 

Aziraphale was not even going to consider it. This medication that Crowley wanted to take was well established, but giving it to entirely healthy people as prevention was a new idea, and possibly risky. Aziraphale flexed his fingers, thought about how they were numb in the mornings, and shuddered. And he had gotten off lightly. He’d read about men who had needed to have their kidneys replaced, or were permanently saddled with high cholesterol, diabetes, brittle bones. What if Crowley had some kind of side effect? Or what if the medication didn’t work the way it was supposed to, didn’t protect him? No, Aziraphale was not even going to entertain the possibility. 

Only, the next day, while looking up the retail price of a 1902 edition of Moby Dick, Aziraphale found himself, quite by accident, perusing a page that detailed the evidence behind safety and efficacy standards for pre-exposure prophylaxis. He shook himself, and closed the window, but not before bookmarking the site. 

A few hours later, with half a dozen scientific studies pulled up on the bookshop’s ancient computer, he sighed and gave up on pretending to do inventory. He relocated to the apartment above the shop, opened up his own laptop, and settled in to read. 

Aziraphale’s was not a particularly scientific mind, but it was very methodological and very, very thorough. He spent hours looking up the most recent studies, then looking up half a dozen other terms to contextualize them and understand their meaning. He thought about emailing Tracy’s office, but he already knew what she would say and he didn’t want to be talked into anything, not even by his doctor. He ought to make a pro and con list, he decided, and he would, just after he finished looking up the proposed mechanism of action…

The phone rang. It was Thaddeus Dowling, calling to say that the new staircase was ready. Aziraphale arranged to have it delivered and installed later in the week, and then went back to his reading. 

He was absolutely not going to say yes. Crowley was being ridiculous. But it wouldn’t hurt to have a bit more information, would it? Aziraphale spent all day reading, and the next day too, in between running down to the bookshop to help direct the workmen who had arrived with the new staircase in pieces on a flatbed truck. 

He deliberated and deliberated, and then, abruptly, he realized that he had made his decision days ago. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, soft and shocked, standing amongst the remains of the old rusted staircase that Dowling’s workmen were hauling away for scrap. 

“What was that?” one of them asked. 

“Nothing,” Aziraphale said, “nothing at all.” 

And then he went upstairs to call Crowley. 

***

Crowley came sauntering in through the open door, wreathed in twilight, just as the last of the workmen was packing up his tools and leaving. 

Aziraphale’s heart, which had been hammering fast as a rabbit’s ever since that soft “oh” had fallen from his lips, tried to crawl up into his throat at the sight of Crowley’s long legs striding into the shop. He had missed him. It had only been a week, and before this they had spent thirty years apart, how had he missed him this much? 

"Nice new stairs," Crowley said approvingly, kicking the door shut behind him. 

"Thank you,” Aziraphale said, tugging on his bowtie. Crowley was wearing sunglasses, as always, but from the angle of his head, it seemed that his eyes were tracking the motion of Aziraphale’s fingers. “I was planning to celebrate actually. Would you like wine?"

He held out the bottle like some sort of sommelier. _Ridiculous_ , he thought, heart going again so fast he thought he might be sick. _Ridiculous, pedantic, overly formal fool—_

But Crowley only smiled down at the label and said, “please.” 

Aziraphale uncorked the bottle at the register, loud in the empty shop, and took it along with two glasses into the dark interior. Crowley followed in his wake like a shadow. In the twilight gloom, he sat on the bottom rungs of the new staircase. After a pause, Crowley sat next to him. Aziraphale poured the wine for them both and held out Crowley’s glass. He took it, long fingers warm and unflinching against Aziraphale’s. They clinked glasses; the chime hung on the air next to the dustmotes. 

"Seems like a lot of celebration for a set of stairs,” Crowley said, taking a sip. 

"Ah, well—" Aziraphale could feel himself flushing. "The wine's not just to celebrate getting a new staircase, but oh dear, I'm just now realizing this is incredibly presumptuous of me...it's to celebrate the fact that I…that I'm saying yes."

"Yes to…?" Crowley asked lightly, but he knew, of course he knew. 

“Being together,” Aziraphale sipped his wine too. “With a few conditions, of course.” 

Crowley took another drink, the long line of his throat bobbing as he swallowed. He sprawled back on the stairs next to Aziraphale, closer to him. Their thighs were nearly touching. All at once it hit Aziraphale how _much_ he had wanted to say yes to Crowley. Crowley smirked at him and moved his leg over so that their thighs _did_ touch, one long line from hip to knee. Aziraphale’s mouth went dry but he didn’t move his leg away; he pressed back. 

“I don’t think it’s presumptuous,” Crowley said abruptly, swirling his wine in his glass. 

“No?” 

“Nah, you know what is presumptuous?” Crowley grinned at him, that rare full smile. Aziraphale couldn’t take his eyes off of those narrow lips. “What’s presumptuous is I already started taking that medication, the day I got it.” 

Aziraphale’s mouth dropped open. “You...really? But you didn’t know what I was going to say.” 

Crowley shrugged. “I’m an optimist, Aziraphale. It’s my worst fucking trait.” 

“No, your worst trait is that you’re incorrigible,” Aziraphale said automatically, and then, softer. “You haven’t had any side effects, have you?” 

“No,” Crowley said, equally soft. “Not any I’ve noticed.” 

“Good,” Aziraphale shifted closer on the stairs, close enough that he could smell the peppermint of Crowley’s shampoo. 

“Let me take you out for dinner tomorrow,” Crowley said, that same, soft voice. “A proper date someplace real nice. We can both get dressed up, and I’ll pick you up in my truck. How does that sound?” 

Aziraphale laughed. He couldn’t help it, he felt giddy with Crowley’s closeness, with the vibrating urgency to get even closer now that they were doing this, actually doing this—

Crowley flashed him another one of those winning smiles beneath his glasses. “I’ll even let you wear my varsity jacket after.” 

“Were you always this much of a flirt?” 

“Well, worked on you, didn’t it?” Crowley took a smug sip of his wine. “Twice, apparently.”

“You _are_ incorrigible, you devil!” Aziraphale shoved at him lightly, but Crowley, suddenly serious, grabbed his hand and held on. 

“Can I kiss you?” Crowley asked. His voice was low, silky. His lips were red with the wine. Aziraphale wet his own lips with his tongue and could feel Crowley’s gaze tracking the motion even behind the sunglasses.

“I don’t see why not,” Aziraphale said, going for arch and aloof, but his voice sounded breathy even to his own ears.

“Were you always this much of a tease?” Crowley murmured, leaning in.

“Always,” Aziraphale said, and then, buoyed up on the lightness of their conversation, before he could lose his nerve, closed the distance between them and brushed his lips against Crowley’s. Crowley didn’t move any closer, although he could have. He just stayed there, let Aziraphale kiss him with light, barely there movements of his lips, let his mouth fall open ever so slightly, just enough for the very tip of Aziraphale’s tongue. When Aziraphale pulled back, Crowley’s cheeks were flushed and he was breathing hard although they had barely done anything. “You like it.”

“What?” Crowley sounded dazed.

“When I tease.”

“Yeah,” Crowley’s lips curled into a smile. “I guess I do.”

“I…I still don’t think we should rush, mind you,” Aziraphale looked down at his hands. The kiss, the joking, the banter was all lovely, but now came the unpleasant part. He had been stealing himself for it all week without even realizing what he was doing. He had been dreading it even before he had consciously made a choice. “I think there’s a great deal we still need to talk about.”

“Like what?” Crowley’s reply was breezy but he was listening.

“What sorts of things you’re comfortable doing together. Doing—” Aziraphale raised his wine glass, drained it. “Doing with me.”

“Ah, right,” Crowley shifted on the staircase, but he didn’t pull away. Their shoulders were still touching, the outside of their thighs pressed together. He reached down to where Aziraphale had set the bottle on the slate floor. “More wine?”

Aziraphale looked longingly at it, thought of how much easier this would be if he just had another glass, and then another, and then another.

(Limbs loose with drink, buzzed and happy, flying high on being wanted.

“Come on let’s go somewhere.”

The other man’s dark eyes wavering. Or maybe blue eyes, or green. It didn’t matter, they blurred together, after a time. There had been so many of them and he hardly ever knew their names. “Are you sure? You seem pretty fucked up?”

“Don’t you want me—” Aziraphale, putting a hand on the man through his clothes, a display of brazenness that nearly always worked. “You can have me any way you like.”

Then later in a dark hotel room, in the men’s bathroom, under the streetlamps of a back alley, on a stranger’s sheets, the inevitable question, “I don’t have—is it alright if—?”

“Yes, fine, it’s fine, just—” Aziraphale, reaching back to guide the other man in, gasping at the sensation of skin on skin. Aziraphale, on a different night, pulling back a set of hips, pushing down between the shoulder blades of a thin, wiry man—all of Aziraphale’s lovers were thin wiry men—letting out a sigh of relief at the friction on his bare skin as he pushed past tight muscle. Aziraphale waking up the next morning in an unfamiliar room, smelling a stranger on his skin, hitching his pants up from where they were pooled around his legs, staggering out, still half drunk, into the bright DC sunlight and sweltering humidity.

Aziraphale, getting ready to go out, using a safety pin to close his shirt cuff over the cast on his wrist, answering the phone—a bit unusual for it to ring so late on a Saturday night.

Aziraphale, back to the wall, sinking down to the floor phone pressed against his ear, “what? I don’t understand. What test? You’re saying I have—” And then, before the tears, before the three inadvisable bottles of red wine, before the inevitable emergency room visit and then clinic visit and then the medications that killed all sensation in his fingers and toes, before even the shame came the understanding— _its nothing less than I deserve_.)

“Better not,” Aziraphale sighed, and Crowley put the wine bottle back to the side, then with a fluttery, indecisive motion reached up and took his sunglasses off too, folded them, put them next to the wine. Aziraphale tried not to squirm at the understanding and compassion in Crowley’s golden eye.

"Whatever you think is safe, I'll do,” Crowley said simply. 

"You don't want to know about the statistics, transmission rates?”

"Not really. I trust you."

Aziraphale gaped at him. “How is it possible that you don’t want to know about any of those things? My dear, the risk is all on you if you want to go through with this.”

“I don’t know, Aziraphale, I just can’t explain. You’re not a stranger I’m meeting at a bar. You’re…you. I’ve trusted you with riskier things before.”

 _And look how that turned out_ , Aziraphale wanted to say. But he remembered the way Crowley had flinched before when he had let slip something similar. He remembered that Crowley wanted to talk about the past as little, perhaps, as he did.

(And there it was again, the same nagging voice that said, _Crowley should know the whole truth. Crowley should know the whole truth and then he should decide if he wants to be with you._ At one point, Aziraphale might have tried to drown that voice with the rest of the bottle, but he wasn’t that person anymore. Instead, he did his best to push it to the back of his mind, focused instead on the here and now, the warm weight of Crowley leaning up against him.)

“I suppose I’ll have to accept that,” Aziraphale said slowly. “But it’s a great deal of responsibility, you know. Having you trust me like that.”

“I—I didn’t think of it like that,” Crowley sighed, scrubbed his palms down the tight, flattering jeans he always wore. Only then did it occur to Aziraphale that Crowley had been anticipating and dreading this conversation too. He was nervous too. He had just always been better at hiding it. “I don’t mind hearing the details if it would make you feel better.”

“Very well,” Aziraphale straightened the pleats on his own trousers. He had been preparing a little speech of his own, but now that they were here, pressed together thigh to thigh, it seemed at best banal, at worst patronizing, too much like a lecture. “My viral load is undetectable, it’s been that way for a long time. As long as it’s still undetectable, it means anything we do is much less risky. I usually get it checked every six months or so, and I’ve got an appointment coming up in July. I think we can do some—some things now, but I want to wait, wait to know that it’s still undetectable before we um…before we…'' he trailed off helplessly.

Crowley took a sip of his wine. “Alright,” he croaked. “What sorts of things are on the table then?”

“Kissing, obviously. H-hands,” Aziraphale stuttered, “touching each other. And I—I want to put my mouth on you. I don’t know if it would be safe in the other direction, but I want to taste you. Very, ah—” He let a breath out, tried to control the thumping beat of his heart. “Very badly in fact.”

“The doctor in Morgantown said oral sex would be safe for both of us with the medication I’m taking,” Crowley pointed out. He paused. "Anal too, if you wanted that."

"Yes, well, I—" Aziraphale tried to still the nervous flutter of his hands, wished again for more wine. "I've read about it of course, and yes, I suppose the risk would be low, but it wouldn't be no risk and Crowley it's— I know this disease is manageable now, I've been living with it for twenty years. But it's still— it hasn't been easy, Crowley, and I— I couldn't live with myself if—"

"It's alright," Crowley said softly. Aziraphale felt a surge of gratitude for his calm, kind voice, for the way he had stepped in to keep Aziraphale from even saying aloud the words that stuck in his throat, filled him with dread. Gratitude for his immediate acceptance of Aziraphale’s limits. “It's alright. I won't suck you off, we don't have to do anything...penetrative. Anal sex isn't even something I did often...before this. It's not something I would miss. I just wanted you to know, I—" Crowley swallowed. "Pretty much everything's on the table for me. But I know I go too fast for you, so…you set the pace, I’ll follow along. I trust you.”

I trust you. It was such an incredible statement. But of course, Crowley had been saying so, without words, for thirty years. It was a gift, it was a grace. Aziraphale hadn't been worthy of that trust before; he would try his best to be worthy of it now. "You're sure?" He asked.

Crowley smiled. "I'm sure."

"Well," Aziraphale said, thinking of the bottom drawer of his nightstand upstairs, "I do like those rules, but nothing penetrative seems a bit too draconian, doesn't it. There are, after all, many different items that one can purchase specifically for the purpose of—"

"Sex toys," Crowley shifted on the stair, blushing all the way to his hairline. "You want me to buy you sex toys."

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow at him.

"Oh my God you already have sex toys, they're somewhere upstairs right now arent they, and you want me to use them on you…Christ." Crowley sat back, looking a bit like a deer in the headlights. "Great, absolutely fantastic, big sex toy fan, me, but um, I havent really...before…you're going to have to tell me, how do you— how do I…?"

Aziraphale took pity on him. "Rather like you'd use the one that's attached to you I expect. A lot of lube, patience, and ultimately vigorous—I like it vigorous by the way—thrusting at an appropriate speed and angle."

"Jesus," Crowley muttered. "I can't believe we're sitting in the bookshop talking about...how am I meant to have this conversation and then wait until tomorrow for our date? You're killing me, Aziraphale, absolutely killing me."

"I'm sure you'll survive," Aziraphale said, although he was feeling more than a little hot under the collar himself. "Patience is a virtue after all."

Crowley stood, brushing his hands down his long thighs. Aziraphale felt the loss of his warmth acutely. “I don’t mind waiting for what’s worth waiting for,” Crowley said. “Need a hand up?” 

Aziraphale looked at Crowley’s hand extended in the dusk, his long elegant fingers, and remembered years and years ago, standing in the doorway of a brightly lit kitchen, the plaintive notes of a dulcimer rising in the air. He took Crowley’s hand, which was warm and strong. He felt as he had then, like a string pulled taught and plucked, vibrating under the touch of those fingers. 

“You’re leaving?” Aziraphale asked, standing. He was very close to Crowley. The stairwell was dim; the last light of evening made even the rough lines of Crowley’s scar look flattering, dashing. “You only just got here.” 

“I think I’d better go, don’t you?” Crowley said, his eye tracking down to Aziraphale’s lips. “We’ll wait till tomorrow, I’ll buy you a nice dinner, we’ll take it slow…” 

He made no move to pull away. All at once, Aziraphale realized he was going to do something rash and _fast_ and for perhaps the first time in his life he wasn’t going to regret it at all. 

“You can buy me dinner afterwards,” Aziraphale said. 

Crowley’s brow furrowed. His mouth began to shape a question but then Aziraphale leaned up and answered it for him and the sound that fell from his lips instead was a low _oh_ , which Aziraphale swallowed and then chased with his tongue and Crowley said it again, _oh_ , into Aziraphale’s mouth as his hands came up to pull him closer, and they weren’t going to stop this time, Crowley knew and he was going to touch Aziraphale anyway, was already touching him, hands everywhere—in his hair, at the small of his back, on his biceps, pushing him back into the bookshop, up against a row of shelves, kissing him, kissing him, kissing him—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading & happy new year! I hope 2021 is a better one! 
> 
> I love and treasure all the comments on this story, even though I’m a bit behind in replying.
> 
> Edited to say: when I posted this I completely forgot I was going to add a little post script about PrEP. I feel strongly that fic is not sex ed, so I'm not going to say a lot about it, but I learned recently that knowledge about PrEP is not as widespread as I had assumed it was. 
> 
> Essentially, Pre Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) has been around since the early 2010s as a way to prevent HIV. It is (in most cases) a one pill per day regimen that contains two drugs which are commonly used to _treat_ HIV as well as prevent it. In serodiscordant couples, the combination of the HIV negative partner taking PrEP and the HIV positive partner having an undetectable viral load is enough to reduce the risk of transmission to essentially zero (even without condoms, even if the HIV negative partner is receiving penetrative sex--statistically the riskiest act for transmission). Each of these things alone--PrEP, undetectable viral load--also make risk nearly negligible. Essentially, in this day and age, there is no biological reason for people with HIV to limit their sex lives, and medications for treating HIV have improved to the point where it is (for all intents and purposes) a chronic illness like any other chronic illness. In my opinion these are some of the most amazing medical achievements of the past 50 years. If you're interested in learning more, [ check out this fact sheet from Avert](https://www.avert.org/learn-share/hiv-fact-sheets/mixed-status-couples), an HIV/AIDS non profit. 
> 
> While PrEP was FDA approved in 2012, this story is set a bit later when it was available but still not quite as widely adopted as it is today--hence Crowley's ignorance of it before visiting the clinic and some of Aziraphale's hesitation. 
> 
> ALSO, I wanted to direct reader's attention to this lovely fanart of chapter 10 that Ness posted on tumblr. [ Check it out here](https://princip1914.tumblr.com/post/639226668688539648/ahhhhhh-what-an-amazing-surprise-the-first-time-i). I am so happy that people are enjoying the story!


	16. Second Chances

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for the beta read! 
> 
> CW: This chapter earns the E rating on the story. If you’d like to skip that part, start reading at the +++ scene cut. There is also a very brief reference to body image issues and brief references to death of a parental figure.

For a while it was only this: the smell of old paper and dust, the heat and wetness of Aziraphale’s mouth, the softness of his hair, the shape of muscles under worn, unassuming cloth. (God his _shoulders_ , Crowley thought, grasping at them, shot through with a dizzying surge of want). 

“I thought patience was a virtue,” Crowley said, breathless, into Aziraphale’s neck, some indeterminate time later. Aziraphale only moaned and reached to pull him back in, and they were kissing again. Crowley was nominally holding Aziraphale against the bookcase behind him, but he wasn’t in control of what was happening; Aziraphale’s tongue was doing something inside his mouth that made his knees feel like water, Aziraphale’s arms were around him, holding him up, keeping him in place, pressed together with no space between them. 

When they had kissed in Crowley’s kitchen a week ago, Crowley had felt like he was being devoured. He had assumed it would be like that again—all consuming, heady and out of control—or else sweet and soft. It was neither. This kiss was slow and measured, but with a banked heat to it. This kiss knew where it was going (the bed upstairs, Crowley could picture it, a wide soft expanse onto which Aziraphale would lay him down and—) but it wouldn’t be rushed on the way there. 

“Sometimes vice has its charms,” Aziraphale murmured against his lips and then he latched his teeth around Crowley’s collarbone and was sucking mercilessly. Crowley gasped and stumbled forward, pushing Aziraphale harder against the bookshelf. He fumbled blindly, trying to worm his fingers into the scant gap between Aziraphale’s belt and shirt. Several thuds sounded in quick succession, but Crowley hardly noticed; Aziraphale’s skin was warm and delightfully soft and Aziraphale’s teeth were scraping against his collarbone, riding the maddening edge of pleasure and pain, leaving him strung tight and charged like the wire of an electric fence—

Aziraphale made a tsking sound against Crowley’s neck and slipped out of his embrace to pick up the books that had been knocked to the ground. He had the audacity to give Crowley a severe look. 

“Mind the books,” he said, as though he weren’t standing here with his pants tented obscenely, his spit drying over a rapidly forming bruise on Crowley’s neck. “Some of them are antique.” 

Crowley laughed. He couldn’t help it. And then the skin around Aziraphale’s eyes crinkled—he was laughing too. Aziraphale set the books down on the shelf behind him and stepped into Crowley’s space, still laughing. They were laughing against each other’s mouths and then suddenly, Aziraphale wasn’t laughing anymore, he was kissing Crowley with a trembling sort of earnestness, warm hands clasped behind his neck. 

“Darling,” Aziraphale said, pulling back, and then he didn’t say anything else. He just stood there in the dim bookshop and looked at Crowley and Crowley looked back. Time stretched as they stood breathing the same, musty air. Crowley’s arousal buzzed just under his skin, a circuit connected by Aziraphale’s fingers laced together at the nape of his neck. All at once, Crowley couldn’t take it anymore—he stepped forwards again and kissed him. Aziraphale sighed into his mouth, a noise of relief. “Do you—?” Crowley asked. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, walking backwards towards the front of the shop, pulling Crowley along with him. 

“Can I—?” 

“Yes.” 

Crowley’s hands were at the bow tie. It fell open at his touch, collar buttoned tight beneath it. They stumbled, still kissing, towards the front of the shop, until Aziraphale’s back was against the register. Crowley crowded him up against it. 

“God you’re so—” Crowley said, spreading his hands on the velvet waistcoat covering Aziraphale’s ribs. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath. 

“You too,” Aziraphale said, nonsensically, and then he pulled Crowley down for an absolutely filthy kiss, tounge fucking all the way into the back of Crowley’s throat, fingers buried in his hair, tugging lightly. 

The register was solid oak. Crowley was already thinking how easy it would be to hoist Aziraphale up on top of it, lean over him, take him out of those trousers. He reached down for Aziraphale’s belt—

Aziraphale pulled away. "If we're going to do this—" he started. 

"Oh God I hope we’re doing this," Crowley groaned. He would stop if Aziraphale asked him to. Of course he would. But he felt half out of his mind already. He’d been thinking about this—Aziraphale pressed up between his legs, wriggling beneath him, solid and warm and eager—for a week, for a month, for thirty years. 

"—then we’re doing it properly.” Aziraphale finished, looking Crowley full in the face with his bright blue eyes. "Darling, let me take you to bed.” 

***

Borders shifted, reformed, dissolved. They were lying somewhere soft and dim, with a door closed against the rest of the world. Their edges blurred and bled into one another, like currents colliding in a stream. Crowley was kissing and he was being kissed. He was touching—oh God, he was touching, still over the zipped up front of Azirahale’s pants, but Aziraphale moaned and pushed his hips into it and scrabbled at Crowley’s belt and then he was _being touched_ at first over his boxer briefs and then with soft, tentative fingers against his bare skin. 

Crowley leaned into it with a gasp. It was so mindlessly _good_ that it took him several long moments to realize that Aziraphale’s body was stiff against his, his hand was trembling where it touched him. Crowley reached down and stilled it with his own. 

“Alright?” 

“Yes, it’s just...it’s just been such a very long time, Crowley.” Aziraphale’s fingers slipped out of Crowley’s boxers, settled on his hip instead.

“Twenty years, I know. It’s ok, it’s been a while for me too. We can go slow. We don’t have to rush,” Crowley said, taking his own hand off of Aziraphale’s fly. He meant it too, even though his whole body was still yearning towards Aziraphale’s, desperate to touch and be touched, confused as to why they had stopped. “Whatever you need.” 

“Can I kiss you again?” Aziraphale asked, soft. 

“Yeah,” Crowley said, equally soft. “Any time you like.” 

Aziraphale didn’t move, he just looked at him, hand tight on Crowley’s hip, blue eyes dark with some unnamable emotion. 

“Go on then—” Crowley started to say, then Aziraphale had closed the space between them. Aziraphale kissed him thoroughly, precisely, with a deliberate sort of gentleness as though he were cataloguing all of Crowley’s reactions and filing them away. The touch of lips here, the slide of tongue there, the hint of teeth on Crowley’s bottom lip, which turned into a proper bite when Crowley hissed and pressed, helplessly, into the sharp edges of Aziraphale’s incisors. Aziraphale kissed exactly the way Crowley fantasized about _being kissed_ , which, given their history together, was a sort of chicken and egg situation that Crowley might have found embarrassing were he not so incredibly turned on. 

"Fuck that's—" Crowley murmured and then the rest of the sentence disappeared into the wet heat of Aziraphale's mouth. Aziraphale kissed him and kissed him and didn't do anything more and just when Crowley was beginning to feel that it was absolutely unbearable, that he would die if he wasn’t touched this very instant, Aziraphale's hand skated up under his shirt over his ribs. 

"Is that good?" Aziraphale asked into Crowley's mouth. 

"Yes." 

"And this?" The hand reached higher, a thumb brushed a nipple in a slow, deliberate circle. 

"Yes," Crowley said, shuddering helplessly. 

"And this?" Aziraphale's other hand had slid inside his opened jeans.

"God," Crowley huffed out. "Yes." He sucked in a breath as Aziraphale began to stroke, exactly the speed and pressure that Crowley liked, as though he had memorized the motions years ago. Maybe, in fact, he had. And wasn’t that a thought, that he’d kept this knowledge hidden away in some dusty corner of his mind through all those years of fucking other people—

"You still like it the way you used to?" Aziraphale asked, watching Crowley's face closely. 

Crowley's hips moved of their own accord into the tight circle of Aziraphale's hand. Aziraphale didn't stop him, so he did it again and again. 

"I learned what I like with you," Crowley managed. "Hasn't changed." 

The tortuous rhythm of Aziraphale's hand stutterd, then resumed. 

"Likewise," he said softly and leaned down to bite at the corner of Crowley's mouth. 

"Can I touch you?" Crowley asked, needing it. 

Aziraphale's eyelids fluttered shut briefly—in arousal? in apprehension?—but all he said was, "please." 

So Crowley set to work on Aziraphale's clothes. Bowtie—already undone in their haste to get at one another downstairs. Crowley pulled on the end of it until it came free of Aziraphale’s collar. He set it on the nightstand next to the bed. Their wrists knocked against one another as Aziraphale kept moving his hand in slow, perfect strokes and Crowley fought valiantly against the rising tide of pleasure, trying his best to wrestle Aziraphale out of his many layers before being swept away. Pocketwatch—removed and set on the nightstand. Waistcoat—it slipped open easily enough, the soft, worn fabric parting over the swell of Azirphale’s belly. 

“I like this,” Crowley said, running a thumb down the edge of the fabric. “Suits you.” 

Aziraphale hitched in a breath and his hand slowed again. “Oh? You don’t think—you don’t find it, well frumpy, do you?”

“I do. It’s so frumpy. But it’s...it’s very you, isn’t it? Seeing you in those polo shirts and jeans makes me sad,” Crowley said, realizing as he said it that it was true. “I like seeing you dressed as yourself.” 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said softly. 

“Rather see you undressed right now though,” Crowley said. 

“Oh?” This time it sounded like a challenge. Aziraphale’s hand began moving again between them. His body was solid and very warm, even through his shirt. Crowley’s fingers skittered over the buttons—these were tighter than the ones on the waistcoat, and besides, Aziraphale was doing something totally unfair with his thumb. 

“I’m going to die before I get you out of all of these,” Crowley half grumbled, half gasped into the shell of Aziraphale’s ear. 

“Nonsense, you’re doing just fine,” Aziraphale murmured, and then dropped his head to bite at Crowley’s neck, the bastard. 

Crowley moaned in despair and arousal. He had the shirt open, finally, but underneath it (of course, how could he expect anything else?) was a crisp white undershirt. Aziraphale took his hands off him just long enough to strip off the button down and waistcoat together, dropping them in one fluid motion on the floor behind him. One of Aziraphale’s hands went back to what it had been doing before and the other slid into Crowley’s hair to pull him deeper into an all-consuming kiss. It had been such a long build up and now Aziraphale’s fingers were moving with steady purpose, his lips were hot and demanding, tongue sliding into Crowley’s mouth in a rhythm that matched his hand. All at once, Crowley realized that he actually was going to die, in one sense of the word, before either of them were even naked. He pushed frantically at Aziraphale’s chest. 

“Stop, stop—” Crowley gasped. “I’m going to—” 

Aziraphale regarded him, blue eyes hungry. “Does it feel good?” 

“Yes.” Crowley’s hips, it seemed, were not entirely in his control. They trembled, wanting to thrust again into the warm, tight circle of Aziraphale’s hand. “I just—I wanted to—you first. I promise I can...hold off.” 

“Don’t hold off.” Aziraphale’s hand left Crowley’s hair and skated down to cup his jaw. “I like making you feel good.” He kissed Crowley again, quick and open mouthed. “You’re so beautiful like this.” 

None of Crowley’s other lovers had ever called him beautiful. Handsome yes, but never beautiful. Crowley didn’t know if it was the kiss—somehow both dirty and tender—or that word falling from Aziraphale’s reddened lips, but whatever it was snapped the thin thread of his restraint. 

“Yes,” he said, “yes, please, please, God touch me again—” 

Aziraphale hummed beside him, and then the world tilted; Aziraphale had lifted him by his hips and swung them around so that Crowley was straddling him, legs spread as wide as the tight jeans pushed halfway down his thighs would allow. 

“Take your shirt off,” Azirpahale said. “I want to see you.” 

Crowley tore it off. One of Aziraphale’s hands resumed its stroking with renewed purpose. The other curled in his own undershirt, pulling it up to expose the wide expanse of his chest, his nipples red and peaked. 

“What are you—?” Crowley started and then jolted with sudden understanding. 

Aziraphale's hand twisted in just the right way and the idea of it alone—fucking filthy—marking Aziraphale's flushed chest and round belly was nearly enough to send him over right then and there. Aziraphale moved his hand once, twice, the cool metal of his ring pressing against Crowley's heated skin and then Crowley was coming in a long shivering rush that hit Aziraphale’s navel and dripped down the side of his ribs to the sheets below.

Crowley stared down at the mess between them, open-mouthed, trying to catch his breath, and then Aziraphale’s hands were on him again, gently easing his jeans and boxers down towards his knees. Crowley flopped over onto his back to take them all the way off, still breathing hard. Beside him, he heard the clink of a belt and the rustle of fabric; Aziraphale was undressing too. 

They lay together, naked, Crowley’s spend cooling on the sheets and on Aziraphale’s stomach, where he hadn’t wiped it off. 

“That was—” Crowley said, and then couldn’t find the words to say more. Aziraphale looked over at him almost shyly. 

“I hope it was satisfactory.” 

“Satisfactory? Are you—?” Crowley gaped at him. “My hands are still shaking look—” he held them out so Aziraphale could see how the fingers trembled. “It was so far beyond satisfactory.” 

Crowley levered himself up on an elbow to look down at Aziraphale. “Let me—” he said, reaching. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, gratifyingly eager, taking his hand, pulling it down between them. 

“Is that?” 

“Yes.” 

Crowley felt loose, unwound, relaxed in a way he hadn’t been in years. Whatever had snapped when Aziraphale had called him beautiful still hadn’t knotted itself back together. He was wrung out, hung up like a piece of laundry on the line, blown about in the wind. 

“How is—” 

“It’s good, _oh_. Crowley’s it’s—” Aziraphale’s nails dug into Crowley’s hipbones. Touching him felt the same as it always had, and yet also almost imperceptibly different. They had never had this kind of time before, this much bare skin. Crowley set about relearning what Aziraphale liked (a looser grip than he himself favored, bruising kisses alternated with gentle ones, nails scraped lightly down the tops of his thighs). There were new things too. He moaned when Crowley dropped his head to lick at a nipple, squirmed away from a touch to the back of his knee. He had a small scar at his shoulder that Crowley hadn’t seen before. 

“Surgery,” Aziraphale muttered when Crowley ran a thumb over it. “Torn rotator cuff.” 

Crowley didn’t know how to feel about these details, the mundane evidence of a full life lived apart, thirty years worth of experiences. How had Aziraphale learned he liked his nipples kissed? That he was ticklish? How had he hurt his shoulder? Crowley paused, hands on Aziraphale’s body, struck by the enormity of it, suddenly, inconveniently, sympathetic to Aziraphale’s doubts; what if it was too late? 

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale sighed and the pang of doubt disappeared like mist in the sun. 

“I’ve got you,” Crowley said, licking his palm and dropping his hand to stroke again, loose and wet the way Aziraphale liked it. “I’ve got you.” Crowley could tell he was close. Aziraphale moaned with each movement of Crowley’s hand—he had always been loud, this at least, had not changed. Crowley touched him gently, trying to drag it out, watching his face. _I’ve got to remember this_ , he thought. _I’ve got to remember this in case it’s the only time. I don’t want to ever forget what it’s like._ And then, on the heels of that thought, _how could I ever forget this? I never should have asked for this, it’s going to ruin me for sex with anyone else afterwards—_

Aziraphale shuddered on one long upstroke of Crowley’s fingers and then his hand gently removed Crowley’s from his skin. He rummaged briefly under the pillow, pressed a cool bottle into Crowley’s palm. 

“Yeah?” Crowley asked, his own heartbeat loud in his ears. 

“Please.” 

“We’ve never—” Crowley hesitated. “You never wanted—” 

“I know.” Aziraphale let out a breath. “Will you?” 

“Yeah,” Crowley breathed, “yeah, just let me—” 

He popped the cap of the bottle. The lube was cool, sticky. He rubbed it between his fingers to warm it, spilled more over his hand, probably too much. It dripped everywhere. 

Aziraphale’s eyes tracked the motion of Crowley’s hand, heavy lidded and hungry. “I did want it,” he said abruptly. 

“What?” 

“I did want it, before. I just couldn’t ask for it.” 

“I know,” Crowley said, and then he let Aziraphale take his hand and guide it back between his legs, then further back, to the delicate, trembling place where Crowley had not ever touched him before. 

***

Lube dribbed and pooled onto the sheets below Crowley's hand. The bed was a fucking mess, but Crowley didn’t care. They could use up a whole bottle of the stuff, smear it all over the sheets. What mattered was that it would be good for Aziraphale, that in this act—giving his body over to someone else for the first time in twenty years—he would be completely and utterly satisfied. Crowley would not be found wanting. 

Aziraphale’s body shivered, clenched, relaxed against Crowley’s hand, took him deeper and deeper, and the sensation traveled down Crowley’s wrist until the distance between them disappeared entirely, until he nearly forgot it was his fingers, and not a different part of his body, buried inside Aziraphale. Aziraphale moaned, sweat pooling in the hollow of his throat, and Crowley couldn’t help himself; he buried his face in Aziraphale’s neck to taste, mouthed at the tendons there, bit gently and moved inside him until Aziraphale’s soft noises grew harsh in his ear. 

“More,” Aziraphale gasped. 

“What do you need.” 

“There’s a...toy in the nightstand.” Aziraphale’s chest heaved. Crowley leaned down and kissed him again on the cheek, a blurred brush of lips, then removed his hand and wiped it on the sheets.

He slid open the top drawer of the nightstand and blinked at what he saw there. 

"Not that one," Aziraphale gasped beneath him. "Bottom drawer.”

Crowley opened the bottom drawer and blinked again, for an entirely different reason.

“Which um…which of these do you want?”

“The largest if you please. The pink one.”

"How often do you use this thing?" Crowley asked, retrieving the object and turning it over in his hands, staring down at its length, its breadth.

"Ah, rather more often than usual since we've been reacquainted," Aziraphale muttered. He was already flushed from arousal, but he colored further and squirmed at the admission. 

Crowley laughed. He couldn't help it. "I jerked it to you too, you know. Held off a week at most and then—"

Aziraphale gave a delighted, shocked sort of gasp, wiggled his shoulders on the bed and abruptly Crowley was struck with the sensation of breathlessness, pressure on his chest.

"I'm really attracted to you," Crowley said, because saying anything else he was feeling after they’d only just gone to bed together for the first time in thirty years, would be absurd. "Really, really attracted to you."

"Even now?" Aziraphale had stopped smiling, oh no, that hadn't been what Crowley wanted at all. Aziraphale's hand drifted over his midsection. "You look exactly how you used to, but I’m—I’ve gotten fat and I’m out of shape, and _sick_ , and—” 

"You're perfect," Crowley said, willing him to understand. Why couldn't Aziraphale see himself through Crowley's eyes? Actually, probably best that he couldn't. It wouldn’t do at all for Aziraphale to realize how far gone Crowley was already, how completely fucking infatuated—

"You're perfect." Crowley breathed again. He bent and kissed right below the swell of Aziraphale’s breast, dropped his mouth to kiss his navel, then lower still, biting gently into the soft flesh of his belly. Aziraphale’s skin was salty and a little bitter. With a jolt of arousal, Crowley realized he was tasting himself. Crowley licked it off of him. Above him Aziraphale moaned and slid a hand into his hair and just this—the evidence of himself all over Aziraphale’s body, the casually possessive way Aziraphale’s fingers cradled the back of his head was so overwhelming and so _good_ , that time slid sideways for awhile and Crowley lost track of it entirely until Aziraphale’s hand was pulling him up, pulling him away. 

“ _Please_ ,” Aziraphlae said, mouth soft, eyes unfocused. 

“Want me to fuck you?” Crowley asked, the obscenity falling from his lips easily. Aziraphale shuddered. 

“Yes,” he said. 

Crowley upended the bottle of lube on the toy, dripped more of it between Aziraphale’s thighs for good measure. Crowley crouched over him, pushed gently, then harder.

“Are you sure?” Crowley faltered. “You’re still tight, I don’t want to hurt you.” 

“I like it,” Aziraphale gasped, “I want to _feel it_ please, _Crowley_.” 

And then, impossibly, there was a give, a stretch, a slow, smooth glide. 

“Thats—fuck that’s—” Crowely felt like the breath had been punched out of him, like _he_ was the one being split open. He looked down between them, and it was entirely _too much_ to contemplate, so he wrenched his gaze to Aziraphale’s face instead. His mouth had fallen open, his eyes had fluttered shut. 

“That’s—” Aziraphale echoed. “Fuck.” 

“How...how does it feel?” 

Aziraphale’s eyes opened again. He blinked up at Crowley. “Like you’re filling me all the way up to my throat.” 

Crowley moved his hand, just a little shift and thrust and Aziraphale’s words ended in a deep groaning sigh. His whole body shook beneath Crowley's. 

“Good?” Crowley asked.

“Good—ah—doesn’t even begin to cover it.” 

Crowley moved his hand again, still trying to be gentle. 

“Harder,” Aziraphale sighed, leaning up into it. “Please.” 

So Crowley gave it to him. It was perfect. It was unbearable. Crowley kept glancing down to see the slide of the thing, and each time it was so overwhelming and obscene, that he had to tear his eyes away. 

"I didn’t know," Aziraphales eyes fluttered shut again, he sounded like he didn’t have enough breath even for a full sentence. "I didn’t know it would be. Like this. With you. Doesn’t feel like this. When I do it to myself.”

“Course it’s different when someone else does it.” 

Azirahphale blinked up at him. “No I mean, it wouldn’t be like this. With anyone else.”

“I—” Crowley said, and then words failed him. What could he say? _I knew it would be like this. I knew it would be fantastic with you. Of course it wouldn’t be like this with anyone else. There’s no one else I want the way I’ve wanted you._

The words stuck in Crowley’s throat. Instead he reached up to brush the sweaty curls off of Aziraphale’s forehead, focused on the sensation of Aziraphale solid and naked beneath him. “I feel like I’m actually inside you,” he said. 

“You _are_ ,” Aziraphale said, tinged with a hint of wonder and then they were kissing again, messily, Aziraphale’s thighs falling open and trembling as Crowley’s hand sped up, searching out the right angle and rhythm. 

“Can you? Just from this?” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, shaking underneath him, “yes, yes, yes—” 

Aziraphale had always been loud. Before, Crowley had gotten into the habit of kissing him through the ending to quiet him, swallowing down his cries. Instinct took over and Crowley leaned down and kissed him brutally, biting at his lips. Aziraphale wailed into Crowley's mouth and arched up against him. Crowley drank down the sound and held him through it, one hand smoothing circles over his bicep, the other coming off the toy to caress his hip. Crowley held him until he had stopped shaking, and held him and held him until Aziraphale pushed him gently away. 

Aziraphale’s stomach glistened. The sheets were a mess of lube and fluids, the air smelled of sex and sweat, and Crowley couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this good. 

“Gosh,” he said, falling back onto the sheets. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, out of breath and hoarse, panting up at the ceiling. “Quite.” And then Aziraphale turned to him and smiled and that smile caught Crowley off guard, lodged in his skin like a splinter he knew he’d be picking at for days to come. It was a familiar smile—sated and a little saucy, brimming with unspoken delight, like they were in on the same secret—but it was one he hadn’t seen on Aziraphale’s face in thirty years. 

“Well,” Aziraphale drew in a long shaking breath. “I’d better shower.” 

“Oh,” Crowley wouldn’t have minded basking here, together in their cocoon of light, for a bit longer. He tried not to feel put out as Aziraphale wiped at his belly with a corner of the sheet, stood and made his way unsteadily through the dark edge of the bedroom to the bathroom. Crowley looked up at the slow blades of the ceiling fan and tried to put the pieces of himself back together. It was useless—he felt as unmoored now as he had with Aziraphale’s hands on him. Still strung up on a clothesline, hanging out in the open, at the mercy of elements beyond his control. It wasn’t an entirely unpleasant feeling. The noise of the shower started and then Aziraphale’s footsteps returned. 

“Aren’t you coming?” 

“What?” Crowley glanced over. Aziraphale was framed in the doorway, a dark, dear silhouette against the bright light and steam of the bathroom. 

“Oh, I thought you might want to join me.” 

Crowley couldn’t keep his lips from curling into that same smile Aziraphale had worn earlier. A lover’s smile. 

“‘Course I do.” 

***

Aziraphale let Crowley wash his hair. It shouldn’t have been a significant thing. What they had been doing to one another beforehand had been far more intimate than Crowley’s fingers working the fancy French shampoo into Aziraphale’s scalp. And yet, as the smell of the lavender shampoo rose in the humid air, Crowley felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes. How often had he done such a task for Agnes, in this very bathroom, a bittersweet sort of caring that had an unacknowledged, ever present end date? And then just a month ago, he’d been standing here using this same shampoo on himself, thinking it might be as close as he ever got to Aziraphale. Now he was washing it out of Aziraphale’s hair, running his hands over the tender skin behind Aziraphale’s ears. He didn’t know if this closeness, too, had an end date—it probably did, but right now at least, with Aziraphale in his arms, isolated from the rapidly passing summer around them, he could pretend it was forever. Crowley ducked his face into the hot water, leaned to press a kiss to the soapy back of Aziraphale’s neck. Aziraphale hummed in response. Crowley could feel it as well as hear it, the vibrations moving up through his lips and into his spine, into all the rearranged pieces of him, and the thought arose again— _I never should have asked for this, it’s going to ruin me for everything afterwards, not just sex. It’s going to ruin me and I won’t even be able to bring myself to regret it._

Aziraphale turned in his arms under the spray of water. 

"I'm afraid I rushed you through the end of things earlier,” he said, hands smoothing over Crowley’s shoulders. 

Crowley groaned. "Don't remind me I swear next time I can last—"

"Let me make it up to you," Aziraphale murmured, and then he was sinking to his knees in the warm spray, bending his head, closing his mouth around—

"Oh God," Crowley gasped, "I'm nearly fifty Aziraphale, I don’t know if I can—"

But Aziraphale merely hummed around him, moved his head with that same deliberate gentleness as before and Crowley slowly came to the astonished realization that he, in fact, could.

+++

The rest of the evening presented itself in lavender scented, honey gold tinted snapshots. The warm, soft bubble of unreality expanded to fill the whole apartment, and Crowley floated in it like a dream. 

Gentle hands wrapped him in one of the fluffy pink towels Aziraphale had brought from DC, soft on oversensitive flesh. Aziraphale’s face was very close to his, lips red and swollen. He smiled at him with affection and more than a hint of pride. 

“Don’t let it go to your head,” Crowley muttered, but he was smiling too, couldn’t seem to stop. He was so happy his chest hurt, he was so happy he was afraid of it. He reassured himself by thinking that these were the moments he would preserve in amber when it all went to shit. He could keep this golden evening forever in sepia, whatever came next. Just this—Aziraphale, gentle, solicitous, helping him out of the clawfoot tub with a hand on the small of his back—would be enough to sustain him for a lifetime. 

They sat at the kitchen table, Crowley still wrapped in just the towel, Aziraphale naked as the day he was born, and looked over the takeaway menu from the diner. 

“Pancakes,” Aziraphale said. A pair of incredibly dorky reading glasses had materialized on the bridge of his nose sometime in the walk between the bathroom and the kitchen. Crowley found them adorable, which was absolutely excruciating. 

“Thought you wanted me to buy you dinner, not breakfast.” 

“Hmm, you’re right...pancakes aren’t really dinner food,” Aziraphale looked back down at the menu. 

Crowley cleared his throat. “Well we better add a pie slice then. It’s only proper. What do you want? Cherry? Key lime?” 

“Apple,” Aziraphale said decisively. 

The evening went on, just like any other summer evening in Eden. It seemed odd to Crowley that the kitchen was the same as it had always been, that the voice on the other end of the phone when he called the order into the diner was bored, officious, and routine; that the insects were loud in the branches of the trees outside and the river rushed by in the darkness below the same as ever. Shouldn’t it have been different somehow? Crowley trailed Aziraphale back into the bedroom, watched the motion of muscles and fat under skin. _I’ve had my fingers inside him, he’s had his mouth on me,_ Crowley thought. _We’ve known each other in all the ways people can know each other, all the ways I wanted to know him for years. Shouldn’t the world have shifted?_

Or perhaps it had, because when Crowley bent to extract the crumpled packet of cigarettes from his jeans on the bedroom floor, Aziraphale asked for one too. 

Crowley hesitated. “I don’t know. Are you sure you should? With your health--” 

“You can’t treat me like that,” Aziraphale cut him off, soft but forceful. “You can’t treat me like I’m fragile. I promise, I’m perfectly fine. Besides,” Aziraphale smiled. “We both know that a cigarette after a fantastic fuck doesn’t count.” 

“Oh, fantastic, was it?” Crowley teased and relented, holding out the packet. 

Aziraphale’s mouth went soft at the corners. “Yes,” he said. “It was.” 

They smoked for a while in comfortable silence. Aziraphale closed his eyes when he sucked at the cigarette. The hollow of his cheeks and the flutter of his lowered lashes, after what had transpired in the bathroom, struck Crowley as so pornographic that he had to look away. 

“I forgot what a rush it is,” Aziraphale said, blowing out smoke.

“The nicotine?” 

“Everything. I feel like we robbed a bank.” 

“What?” Crowley asked, laughing. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale laughed too. “My heart’s racing, I can’t catch my breath.” He paused, cupped the cigarette in his hand. A gust of wind blew in the open bedroom window and the mood changed, grew serious. Aziraphale’s face looked lined, more melancholy than Crowley liked to see it, lit from below by the red glowing ember. “I suppose I feel like we’ve gotten away with something big and….and transgressive. I keep looking over my shoulder, wondering when it’s going to catch up to us.” 

“What if it never does,” Crowley said, because the cigarette had made him bold and jittery and careless. “What if you could just...be happy. No consequences.” _Here._ Crowey didn’t say, because he might be bold but not stupid. _What if you could just be happy here, together, with me._

“Imagine that,” Aziraphale said softly, and then didn’t say anything more. 

***

The doorbell chimed faintly downstairs.

“That will be the food,” Crowley said, springing up, full of nervous energy despite the two ( _two_ ) orgasms, the cigarette meant to wind him down. “I’ll get it.” 

He pulled on his jeans from the pile by the bed, searched listlessly on the floor for his shirt, hoping that Aziraphale might offer him one of his instead. The doorbell rang again. Crowley looked up.

"Go on then," Aziraphale said indulgently, right on cue, "middle drawer of the dresser."

Crowley rummaged in the drawer, pulled out a shirt at random and slipped it over his head, inhaling the smell of Aziraphale that clung to the inside collar.

When Crowley looked up, Aziraphale was watching him, mirth and affection at war with one another in his blue eyes.

Crowley fled before Aziraphale could say anything.

Leslie, a tall, gangly man who had been a few years ahead of Crowley at Eden High stood at the door holding a plastic bag. The aroma that wafted up from the bag—greasy and delicious—made Crowley's stomach growl.

Leslie eyed him curiously. “Working late?” 

“Yep.” Crowely signed for the food. “Lot of renovating to do.” 

“I’d imagine. This old place is a complete firetrap, probably not up to code at all.”

Crowley took the bag, but Leslie lingered on the porch. “Hey, what do you think of the draft picks this year?” 

“What?” 

“The Ravens draft.” 

“I don’t watch football,” Crowley said. 

“Oh, well you’re wearing a Raven’s t-shirt. Thought you was a fan.” 

Crowley looked down at his chest. He was indeed wearing a Baltimore Ravens t-shirt.

“Right,” he said. “Well. Nice seeing you Leslie.” 

Leslie didn’t take the hint. 

“I’m sorry if I’m prying but—” Leslie hesitated. “You’re incredibly forgiving aren’t you. If I were you, I don’t know if I could ever speak to anyone from the Wright family ever again, let alone—” 

“You are.” 

“I’m what?”

“Prying,” Crowley said, and shut the door. 

***

Upstairs, they sat cross legged across from one another on the top sheet of the bed, which had been pulled over the mess on the fitted sheet below and ate straight out of the styrofoam take out containers. Crowely had retrieved the wine bottle, but not the glasses, from downstairs. They passed it back and forth as they ate. 

"You know I had a whole fancy dinner planned for you," Crowley said around a mouthful of pancake drenched in fake maple syrup. "Was gonna get dressed up all nice, pick you up, drive you over to a hotel in Morgantown. They have an old fashioned formal dining room. Never been there myself, but I thought it would be just your thing."

Aziraphale stole a bite of Crowley's pancake, "Well, you can take me there whenever you like, but you're wrong, you know."

"About what?"

"My thing."

"What do you mean?"

Aziraphale's eyes were soft. "You're my thing, Crowley. I like fine dining, but I'll be honest, the restaurant is merely incidental."

If anyone else had said it, it would have sounded like a rehearsed line, something to get them into bed together. But here they were, they had already gone to bed together, they were in bed together right now in fact, and Aziraphale was looking at him with an sincerity that had Crowley’s heart feeling like it was going to expand right out of his chest.

"You can't just…you can't just say things like that," he managed.

"I told you before," Aziraphape said, cutting into the apple pie with deliberate, precise movement of the plastic spoon. "Nothing about this is casual for me. I can't do casual these days because of...well...but at any rate, even without that, it wouldn't have been casual with you. It never has been."

 _What does that mean?_ Crowley wanted to scream. _Does that mean you'll stay when the summer's over? Or does it just mean you're prepared to hurt us both when you leave?_

But Crowley couldn't ask these questions; he wasn't ready for the answers. And anyway, the summer wasn't even half over, they had only just slept together once (two orgasms notwithstanding). July and August stretched out long and luxurious before them. Why ruin things now by asking about their inevitable ending when they had only just begun?

"It's not for me either," Crowley said, clearing his throat. "Casual I mean."

"Good," Aziraphale said, and held out a spoonful of pie for Crowley to taste.

***

After dinner they stripped the bed. 

"Do you know where Agnes kept her sheets?" Aziraphale asked. "I'm afraid I only brought the one set with me. I usually wash them in the morning and they dry by evening to put back on the bed."

“Yeah, there’s a linen closet in the hallway,” Crowley said. “I’ll get them.” 

He left Aziraphale behind in the warm glow of the bedside lamp. 

In the dark hallway, Crowley opened the closet door and the smell of Agnes’ laundry detergent wafted over him, unexpected and disorienting. She had insisted he use some sort of all natural, biodegradable, expensive shit when he had started to do her laundry in the last year. He'd thought to buy it himself, those first few weeks after—but Walmart didn’t carry it; it was the sort of thing you had to special order and Crowely, sunk in grief, never had. Now the smell washed over him again carrying a thousand memories in its wake, like the old photographs tumbling out from behind doors downstairs. The earliest ones clung and stuck: Agnes' hands on his, already weathered when he was a child, teaching him how to pluck at his mother's dulcimer. Agnes chopping herbs in the kitchen, making up a skillet of something, uncannily able to tell the days there would be nothing waiting for Crowley to eat at home. Agnes, snatching away the lighter he had tried to hold up to the thick cardstock check he'd gotten in the settlement. "It's blood money," he'd said, stubborn and eighteen, covered in stitches that hadn’t yet healed. "I don't want it." 

"Too bad," Agnes had told him. "You don't burn cash. That ain't how you get revenge. You save it, you invest it in whatever will hurt them the most, and when the time comes, you use it to live the life you want to live. You want to get back at them? Do it by being happy." 

In a way, Crowley had Agnes to thank for everything. For the farm, purchased with its mineral rights intact, for the pilot's licence and the Bentley and even, for this, for bringing Aziraphale back to Eden. 

“Thank you,” Crowley murmured in the dark hallway, then immediately felt foolish. Agnes wasn’t here anymore, she was part of the mountain now, and besides, there was no sense in talking to ghosts. 

"Crowley?" Aziraphale called from the bedroom. "Did you find the sheets?" 

"Yeah," Crowley said around the lump that had arisen in his throat, gathered up an armful of the dusty linens. "Coming." 

***

"Would you like to stay over?" Aziraphale asked, then bit his lip. "Of course I don't want to presume only it's getting late and—"

"Yes," Crowley said, "I'll stay."

They lay down together on the musty sheets that smelled like someone Crowley had loved dearly and lost.

"Sex always makes me so tired," Aziraphale muttered into Crowley's collarbone. "I had forgotten."

"Mm," Crowley said, passing his hand through the curls on Aziraphale's forehead.

Aziraphale's breathing evened out quickly until he was snoring gently against Crowley's shoulder, but Crowley couldn't sleep. The restless energy of before had returned. He turned his face into the pillow, tried to get comfortable, but the minutes ticked by, became hours. Finally, in the early hours of the morning, Crowley swung his legs out from under the covers and sat on the side of the bed. Aziraphale turned over and mumbled something unintelligible in which Crowley could only understand the words "off" and "fan." Crowley got up and pulled the chain that dangled from the ceiling fan until its blades slowed and stopped above them. Azirapahle snuffled into the pillow and started snoring, but Crowley did not get back into bed.

With a trembling hand, he reached out to open the top drawer of Aziraphale's nightstand. It was still there, the thing that had shocked him earlier, when there had been no time to address it, or even decide if he wanted to bring it up at all. Lying inside the drawer was an inexpertly bound antique copy of _Leaves of Grass_ and tucked inside its front cover was a sheaf of mimeographed papers, faded from age. They were covered in numbers, mining calculations from long ago, problems spelled out in neat typeface, answered in a messy slanted hand that Crowley recognized as his own. Crowley ran a finger over the front cover. The book was not dusty, and besides, Agnes had never kept anything in this drawer; Aziraphale must have brought this odd relic of the past with him from DC, must have installed it close beside his bed for safekeeping.

 _Why?_ Crowley wanted to ask. _What happened to a blank slate?_

He thought Leslie standing in the porchlight, saying, _you’re incredibly forgiving aren’t you?_ He thought of Agnes telling him, _no matter what you learn_ … and wondered, not for the first time, what she had known. He glanced over at the outline of Aziraphale under the blankets. _What’s catching up to us? What are you afraid of?_

But the contents of the drawer were not the solution to any of these mysteries, and, although Crowley was very fond of asking questions, for once he was not sure he wanted the answers.

He slid the drawer shut and climbed back into the bed, rearranged himself until his front was pressed up against the solid warmth of Aziraphale's back and fell into an uneasy sleep. For the first time in many years, he dreamed of a cage door slamming shut, blue eyes meeting his own, the whine of the cable as it winched him down into the earth for the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been A Time recently in the United States (and everywhere really). I hope this chapter brought some cheer! 
> 
> Also, because I literally spent hours thinking about this even though it’s so in the weeds, here is an explanation no one asked for: yes, in this story, Aziraphale is from Washington DC. But in 2015 the DC football team hadn’t yet changed their name and logo and I didn’t want to imagine Aziraphale having a shirt with a racial slur on it. So he’s a Baltimore Ravens fan. Problem solved.


	17. The Day After Valentines Day, 1985: Aziraphale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks once again to [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for the beta read! 
> 
> In order to get the full experience of this chapter, I recommend listening to [ this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hSXKhrmSHw) first.
> 
> Trying my best to give those canon moments their due ;)

Someone was picking at a dulcimer. The sound of it drifted towards Aziraphale, plaintive as the mountain wind, as he stirred in sheets that were not his own. He pressed his nose into the pillow and smelled peppermint and chlorine. It had not been a dream, then. He was at Crowley’s house, in Crowley’s bed, he had—

Images of the evening filtered back in slowly and unavoidably. Shotgunning a beer over Sandy’s enameled kitchen sink, mouth and shirt wet with it, the team cheering around him; Crowley’s bolo tie, smooth and warm with body heat under his fingertips; Crowley’s mouth, warmer still, lips unexpectedly soft for someone who was all lines and angles. Only Crowley hadn’t—Crowley had pushed him away. 

Aziraphale’s head pounded. He felt suddenly like he might be sick again. He shuffled to his feet and towards the door, hoping he could find the bathroom from last night. Crowley’s bedroom was bright, too bright. Evidently it had snowed overnight. The room was luminous with light that glanced off the unbroken field of white beyond the glass of the room’s single window. Aziraphale put his hand on the wall to steady himself and abruptly the nausea faded, was slowly replaced by curiosity. It seemed odd that he had never been here before. He saw Crowley nearly every day now; in calculus class and after school, in their hiding places—the church, the bookshop. But this was the first time he had been in Crowley’s home. 

The ceiling above him was low and stained. A half assembled model airplane sat on top of a cheap plywood dresser next to a pair of swimming goggles and a mason jar containing—Aziraphale squinted to get a closer look—three gold varsity pins shaped like swimmers. Why hadn’t Crowley put them on his jacket? Only later would it occur to him that perhaps Crowley did not have a varsity jacket; perhaps he could not afford one. There was the bed pushed up against the wall, a pile of papers covered in Crowley’s scrawling hand on the floor by the door, a half-dead potted cactus on the windowsill and—nothing more. Nothing to suggest that someone like Crowley lived here. Aziraphale had imagined how Crowley’s room might look more times than he liked to admit, and in those visions it had always been very cool, a bit punk, glamorous—posters of rock stars or perhaps fighter jets plastered over black painted walls. But this sparse, bland space suggested that Crowley didn’t really live here—perhaps he never had or perhaps he was so eager to be gone he was half moved out already. The thought filled Aziraphale with a nameless sort of desolation. 

He slid open the top dresser drawer and peeked inside. Here, at least, were signs of life. A crumpled cigarette packet and lighter shared space with socks and the familiar make-up bag. The bolo tie from last night was here too, alongside an artificial rose with faded fabric petals and a green wire stem. A photograph with worn edges was tucked under the rose; a woman with long red hair sitting on a picnic blanket in the dappled summer sunlight, two small children playing by her side. Aziraphale shut the drawer abruptly, feeling the sting of second-hand embarrassment, a flush of guilt for prying into something so clearly private. 

Aziraphale made his way out of the empty bedroom into the hallway. The sound of the dulcimer was louder here, drifting from a bright room at the end of the long, wood paneled corridor. He didn’t follow it, but instead stepped across the hallway into the bathroom. A small tableau awaited him: a toothbrush, set out by the stained sink with toothpaste already curling on its bristles, a paper dixie cup, and a bottle of aspirin. Aziraphale’s suit was folded neatly and set on the closed seat of the toilet. Aziraphale blinked down at these items, a strange, almost painful contraction in his chest. It hurt when he breathed, like the ache of a broken rib. Crowley had done this. Crowley had pushed him away, but then he had gone into the bathroom, folded his clothes, set out painkillers and a toothbrush, like he—like he _cared_. Aziraphale thought it might mean something. Then again, it might only mean that Crowley was trying to be a polite host. 

Aziraphale brushed his teeth and took the aspirin. His hands were still unsteady as he reached for his folded suit. The pants fell to the floor, belt clanging loudly against the metal legs of the sink. In the distance, the noise of dulcimer stopped abruptly, then restarted again a few moments later, cautious and quieter than it had been. Aziraphale put the pants on, the silky fabric whispering over his legs, and then crept out into the hallway, bare feet quiet on the smoke stained carpet. 

The hallway opened out into a bright kitchen. The watery winter sun dazzled on the snow outside and glanced through the large kitchen windows, falling through Crowley’s hair, lighting it up fire red. He was at the worn table, back to the doorway, picking at the instrument in his lap. And he was singing too, voice low, barely audible above the dulcimer. 

Aziraphale watched him from the doorway, feeling like a plucked string himself, vibrating with some unnamable hope. 

“I didn’t know you could play,” Aziraphale said quietly. Crowley jumped and whirled around on his seat, the dulcimer slipping from his lap in a cacophony of discordant noise.

“You’re up.” 

“Yes. Thanks for the aspirin.” 

“Thought you could use it,” Crowley said, picking up the dulcimer. “You kind of had a rough night.” 

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said. “About...all that.” 

“It’s fine.” Crowley wouldn’t meet his eyes. “We can just...forget it if you like.” 

“Alright,” Aziraphale said. He ought to feel relieved. It had been a momentary lapse, poor judgement brought on by alcohol and loneliness. It was good that Crowley was going to forget it. They could go on just how they were. It was good. “What was that song you were just playing?” 

Two spots of red were faintly visible on Crowley’s cheekbones. “It’s nothing. Just something Agnes is trying to teach me. Figured I’d practice while everyone was out and you was asleep. This was my mom’s.” Crowley held up the dulcimer. “Never learned it when she was alive though.” 

“Could you play it for me?” Aziraphale asked, crossing the worn linoleum to sit with Crowley at the table. “If you don’t mind.” 

Crowley regarded him curiously, as though Aziraphale had surprised him. “I don’t mind,” he said eventually. He settled the dulcimer on his lap again and began to pluck at it. The same tune from before rose in the air, dreamlike and sad. Crowley licked his lips, a flash of red tongue, shot Aziraphale a glance that was both self-conscious and somehow knowing, and began to sing:

_All of my friends fell out with me,  
because I kept your company._

More of the evening was coming back to Aziraphale now. Warmth and music, the burn of homemade liquor in his throat, Sandy laughing uproariously at something Aziraphale had said or something he had done, Aziraphale not quite sure why they were laughing, laughed too, drunk and affable. 

_But let them say whatever they will,  
I love my love with a free good will._

Later, Crowley’s voice hushed in the darkness, _—you’ve got to know I do._ Crowley’s lips, pressed against his. Crowely had pushed him away, but for the barest moment, hadn’t he kissed Aziraphale back? Or was Aziraphale only imagining that he had? 

_One, I love._  
Two, he loves.  
Three, he's true to me. 

Crowley in the truck with him, the backs of his hands brushing against Aziraphale’s stomach as he buckled his seat belt. Earlier, Crowley’s golden eyes, warm and amused, meeting his own from across the room. Earlier still, dropping off his backpack full of books in the coat closet before the party started. His backpack full of books oh—

"What is it?" Crowley asked, seeing the expression change on Aziraphales face, breaking off the song, hand dampening the dulcimer strings. 

"Oh, it—it’s my books. Crowley I've been such a fool. I brought a backpack full of them to Agnes, to show her, and took it with me to the party afterwards. I—I think I left it at Sandy's—"

"Can't you ask Sandy for them back?" Crowley asked, voice mild.

"Crowley, you don't understand. Sandy is...Sandy would...if he knew how much they meant to me, he would make me watch as he burned them. And then he'll tease me about it the rest of the year."

"Doesn't sound like much of a friend," Crowley murmured.

To his great embarrassment, Aziraphale found himself close to tears. They were only books after all. It shouldn't mean so much. But he'd spent so much time refurbishing them and they were valuable. Agnes had trusted him with them. He should have known better than to bring them inside, oh why hadn't he thought to leave them in the truck—

"Hey, hey," Crowley sounded alarmed. "I didn't mean—I was just teasing. Aziraphale, I have your books."

"It was so silly of me I should have—wait, really?"

"Yes, really. I know how important they are to you. I went back in for them. Hang on—"

Crowley set the dulcimer on the table. Aziraphale's eyes fixated on its strings, bright lines of light in the morning sun that streamed through the kitchen window. Crowley stood, shuffled through the living room then down the hallway towards his bedroom. Aziraphale watched him go and felt as though he were underwater. Was this what it was like for Crowley when he swam? Did the rest of the world disappear, muted and strangely distant, sound distorted, everything narrowed to the rushing sensation of breathlessness?

Crowley returned, Aziraphale's backpack in hand.

"Here you are," he said, handing it over with a grin.

Aziraphale unzipped the bag and began sorting through the titles. They were all there, all except—

" _Leaves of Grass_ ," Crowley said, holding out a familiar leather-bound book. Aziraphale stretched out a hand towards the book. The sensation of being underwater had intensified. His pulse was audible, pounding in his ears, nearly drowning out Crowley, who was still smiling faintly, talking in that easy way of his.

"Sorry, I couldn't sleep last night so after you dropped off, I took it out of your bag and read a bit. You know for a 19th century guy turns out Whitman was quite a—"

But Aziraphale never did find out what Walt Whitman was, because somehow, disastrously, he had reached out to take the book and ended up cradling Crowley's face in his hands instead, leaning in and effectively silencing Crowley's mouth with his own.

As soon as Aziraphale realized what had happened he stepped back. The world rushed back in, blood rushed into his cheeks, they felt warm with it, he was sure he was flushing. Only his lips felt warm too, and Crowley's lips had been very warm, and soft, with just a hint of wetness where they had been parted. Crowley had gone back inside the party for him, had found his bag of books for him, had known how much they meant, more than that had stayed up last night watching as Aziraphale slept, reading the first book Aziraphale had ever put back together, reclaimed from the brink of ruin, holding it in his long-fingered elegant hands—

"Um," Crowley said. "I um. Stopped you last night, but it wasn't because I didn't want—Thought you didn't—thought it was just a…” His mouth moved but no sound came out. "Thought you were gonna hate me in the morning," he settled on eventually. The red spots on his cheeks had expanded and darkened; he was blushing furiously. He looked to be about three seconds from fleeing the kitchen, which wouldn’t do at all.

"It's the morning," Aziraphale said, with a kind of measured calm he did not feel. "I don't hate you."

Crowley swallowed visibly and his eyes fell to Aziraphale's mouth. They moved at the same time. Their teeth cracked together painfully and then—

And then—

Crowley's mouth was open under his, hot and wet and slick, and Crowley had set the book on the table and one of his hands was curled around the sensitive back of Aziraphale's neck, tugging at him with the gentle, inexorable force of a mountain river. Aziraphale shuffled his bare feet closer on the cracked linoleum, waded eagerly into the bright and shining stream, let the current sweep him away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to get this short little update out into the world, but unfortunately the fast turn around time meant I haven’t had a chance yet to reply to any comments. Please know that this fic is very special to me and I love and treasure all the comments. It means so much to me to know that people are enjoying it!
> 
> Also, please, please, please take a look at this lovely art from several chapters ago that Ness posted on Tumblr! [ Check it out here! ](https://nessieshirak.tumblr.com/post/640959649087209472/based-on-chapter-15-of-the-false-and-the-fair-by)


	18. Enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile), as always, for the excellent beta help! 
> 
> This fic is usually archive locked. I'm experimenting with unlocking it for ~24 hours around the time I update, but if you want to keep following it, please make an ao3 account because it will be locked again! This is for my own privacy and peace of mind (all my E fics are locked).
> 
> CW: there is a lot of sex in this chapter, most of it hovering around the M rating rather than outright E. That said, if you’d like to skip most of it, stop reading at the paragraph starting, “Crowley’s narrow chest rose and fell lightly..." and pick up again at the paragraph beginning, “Aziraphale wandered down the hallway…”

The days passed, blissfully, into one another. Time divided itself around discrete moments, anchored like rocks in the bed of a flowing stream. Aziraphale, making coffee the way he had every morning since arriving in Eden, but this time pressing his lips to Crowley’s before passing the second mug over. Crowley’s fingers darting behind the shell of Azirahale’s ear to tuck away a stray curl. The path down the hallway to Crowley’s bedroom—how laughable it seemed now that Aziraphale had thought it dark and mysterious that first time they dined together—the carpet strewn with discarded clothes, the air full of laughter. The quiet moments too: Aziraphale reading on Crowley’s sofa, bare feet tucked up under his narrow thigh; Crowley scrubbing dishes at Agnes’ sink after a long and luxurious lunch at the bookshop; a pair of snakeskin boots, discarded in the entryway of Aziraphale’s bedroom; a toothbrush, installed next to his own in the bathroom. 

And, of course, the sex. It had been such a long time since Aziraphale had touched or been touched by anyone other than himself. He remembered the broad outlines of what it was like—the thickness of another man in his mouth, the blissful out-of-control tumble of putting his body in someone else’s hands. But there were a thousand details he had forgotten or perhaps never properly appreciated; the way Crowley's fingers tightened involuntarily in his hair a few seconds before he finished, the ticklishness of his hip bones, the exact taste of the back of Crowley's neck. He realized he was cataloging all these moments, filing them away and storing them up, like a squirrel storing seeds for winter. 

All of it was so lovely and so effortless that Aziraphale spent the entire week since they had first gone to bed together in a state of heightened unreality. Even ordinary experiences and objects seemed to glow with some kind of special, wondrous significance. Swept up in the languid air of summer, in the pleasure of Crowley’s body and the tenderness of his regard, Aziraphale could not remember ever being this happy. 

(He did not think about the roiling thunderstorms that followed hot summer afternoons. He did not think about the empty office, the stifling warehouse awaiting him in DC in September. He did not think about an August thirty years ago, about shallow seas dried up and buried, about mountains higher than the Himalayas crumbled to hills by the passage of time, flattened to dust by the press of a button, about the inevitable ending of all things.) 

***

They worked together in the bookshop stripping paint off the walls, covering them with primer one day and then with a sea breeze blue the next. It was the kind of color that would make the whole place brighter, airier, more like how Aziraphale remembered it from childhood—expansive and full of possibility. They applied one full coat of paint and then, when that was finished, Crowley stripped off his shirt, stained with paint, damp with sweat—Aziraphale tracked the motion with his eyes without trying to hide where his gaze lingered—and declared that it was time for a swim. 

“Now?” 

“It’s too hot for this, besides, the paint’s got to dry.” 

Crowley draped his shirt over the back of his neck and loitered while Aziraphale hammered shut all the cans of paint. Aziraphale closed the door and double checked the locks. Crowley watched him do it from behind his sunglasses and smirked at him and Aziraphale knew that Crowley knew that he knew that neither of them would be coming back to the bookshop tonight. 

They drove through town with the windows of the truck down, the breeze ruffling the sparse, graying hairs on Crowley’s chest. And this, too, was ordinary. And this, too, was wonderful. 

Crowley undressed the rest of the way on the wooden dock of the pond and dove, headfirst, into the green water. He was just as elegant in the water as Aziraphale remembered. Aziraphale watched him with an ache that bloomed with each kick of Crowley’s narrow feet, each pull of his long arms, each droplet of water thrown up and suspended against the blue sky. The ache unfurled into an almost unbearable tenderness. Crowley swam the length of the pond and then back, treaded water, grinning, beside the dock. 

The ghostly green color of the water was somehow flattering on Crowley’s angular body. Aziraphale watched him tread water and toyed with his own shirt buttons, thought about how he was round in all the places Crowley was flat, fleshy in all the places Crowley was only muscle and bone. 

Crowley seemed to understand. “It’s nothing I ain’t seen before. I like the way you look. Is that so hard to believe?” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, but he undressed anyway. He wasn’t usually ashamed of being fat; in fact, most of the time he thought of it as somewhat of a personal victory after all those years of medications that tried their best to make him skinny and miserable. But now, standing naked in front of Crowley in the broad daylight, all he could think of was how he had looked when he was eighteen. Crowley had never seen him fully naked, back then when he’d still been something to look at. The melancholy ache returned. _How much time had they missed?_

“I like the way you look,” Crowley said again, face lit from below by the shifting sun on the water, expression almost shy. And then the soft expression slid sideways into something far more lascivious. 

“Come on in and I’ll show you.” 

So Aziraphale did. 

***

Aziraphale drifted for a while in the sun. The water was warm on top, but cool below where his legs hung, ghostly and green, as he lazily treaded water. He lay back and looked up at the sky between the treetops on the hills on either side, deep blue with only one or two fluffy white clouds. A few small fish swam up to Azirphale’s shoulders and nibbled gently at his skin. He shooed them away with a splash.

They had grappled for a while in the water, Crowley’s hands all over his body, doing as he promised, _showing Aziraphale how much he liked it_ , until Aziraphale had arched his back helplessly and grabbed onto the ladder for support. He needn't have worried. Crowley had held him the whole time. Crowley had gotten out soon after to lie in the sun, but Aziraphale, sated, relaxed, buoyant with happiness lingered in the water. 

Aziraphale did not know how long he floated there, letting the tension wash away from his body in the cool green of the pond. 

It seemed like the dinner when he had first pressed his lips to Crowley’s had been ages ago, that their stilted conversation in the kitchen of the bookshop apartment a day later was ancient history. It felt like a lifetime since then, the kind of life Aziraphale had thought was gone forever when he had answered the phone that Saturday night a week before his thirtieth birthday. The kind of life he had never expected to have a second chance at living

Aziraphale swam back to the dock and hauled himself up on the rusted ladder. Crowley was lying on his back on the weathered boards, sunglasses pulled over his eyes, to all appearances fast asleep. Even after all these years, his body had hardly changed at all. Unlike Aziraphale, who had grown soft, Crowley still had all his hard edges, but they seemed blurred now in the afternoon sun, like a watercolor painting. Crowley looked fragile, approachable, and above all, at peace in a way he had never been when they were growing up together—always restless, always wanting something more than Eden could offer.

Crowley’s narrow chest rose and fell lightly, but he was otherwise still as Aziraphale watched. 

Aziraphale’s eyes followed the line of his sternum down to his navel, then lower. He couldn’t stop himself from reaching out with his fingertips, still wet from the pond, to trail one meandering line along the deep crease between Crowley’s belly and his leg. Crowley’s lips quirked up at the touch—ah, not asleep after all—and his chest fluttered faster, but otherwise he made no move towards or away from Aziraphale’s hand, which was now stroking inwards and upwards from Crowley’s thigh in a more deliberate fashion.

Aziraphale bent to lick along the same path, then rested his hand on the flat of Crowley’s belly as he took Crowley into his mouth. Crowley let out a little shivering sigh and his long legs fell open incrementally wider. Aziraphale pulled off.

“Yes?” he asked. Crowely lifted his head up and pushed his sunglasses off his face, dropping them to the side. His golden-brown eye met Aziraphale’s. 

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “That is...if you…” 

Aziraphale licked again and Crowley’s eye fluttered shut as a muscle jumped in his jaw.

“I do,” Aziraphale said, “very much.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said again, and let his head fall back, pillowed on his hands.

“That’s right my dear,” Aziraphale said softly into Crowley’s thigh, bubbling over with a swirling mixture of affection and want, golden and warm like the sunlight lancing through the green water by the side of the dock. “Just lie there, let me take care of you.”

The drone of the insects, the sharp scent of Crowley’s arousal layered over the fresh smell of the soap he used, the heaviness of Aziraphale’s limbs after having been so weightless in the water, formed together into a kind of languid, exquisite, tenderness that coursed through Aziraphale’s veins thicker than blood. He bent and took Crowley into his mouth again. Crowley wriggled slightly beneath him, made a quiet, contented noise, and it was good, it was better than good, it was perfect. Aziraphale sucked gently, suffused with pleasure—the small sounds Crowley made with every press of Aziraphale’s tongue mingling with the sound of the pond lapping at the underside of the dock, the warmth of the sun evaporating the last drops of water off of Aziraphale’s shoulder blades as he rose on his forearms to take Crowley deeper, the pure joy of wanting and being wanted in return. One of Aziraphale’s hands had migrated of its own accord to press gently between Crowley’s thighs and the quick inhale of breath Crowley made at the brush of Aziaphale’s fingers shattered the timelessness of the moment, lit something incandescent and greedy in Aziraphale, bloomed like a spark deep underground. Aziraphale pulled his mouth off and nipped at Crowley’s hipbone. “Turn over.”

Crowley lifted his head to stare down at him and then did as he was told. Aziraphale dropped his mouth again, licked one broad stripe between Crowely’s shaking thighs and then further back between—

Crowley jumped at the touch, turned to look at him over his shoulder. 

“Fuck, Aziraphale, that’s—”

Aziraphale drew back. “I’m terribly sorry, I should have asked. Do you not like it? We can do something else—”

“I’ve never—”

“Not everyone likes it. It’s fine, really.” If Aziraphale was a bit disappointed, he tried not to let it show. 

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it.” Crowley’s face flushed scarlet. “I like everything with you,” he muttered. “Always have done.” 

Later, Aziraphale would wonder if this could have been a moment to say something, to tell Crowely, despite their agreement to put the past behind them, that there were some things they should discuss. That Aziraphale didn’t understand Crowley’s overwhelming affection, and more to the point, absolutely didn’t deserve it. That Crowley had misjudged him utterly to say such a thing, _I like everything with you, always have done_ , and Aziraphale had been a monster thirty years ago and was even more of a monster now, letting Crowley go on like this, go on wanting, despite it all. But instead, Aziraphale—swept up in the joy of a cool pond in the height of the summertime, of an acknowledgement, frank and out in the open for the first time, of half a lifetime of desire—said nothing, only moved his thumbs to gently pull Crowley open, only bent again to press his mouth to the most intimate of places on Crowley’s body.

***

The house was dark inside, cool and musty after the warm, sunny dock. Aziraphale took the first shower, working Crowley’s peppermint shampoo into his hair, the taste of him still in his mouth. Crowely had been tense at first, still uncertain perhaps, that he could be wanted in this way. And then, slowly, his body had relaxed, opened to Aziraphale, become eager for it, until he was rolling his hips and pressing back into Aziraphale’s mouth and muffling little cries into the skin of his own wrist. He had let Aziraphale take his time, let Aziraphale savor him until he was gasping and shaking and nearly begging. Aziraphale had wanted to draw it out forever, keep Crowley like this—writhing in sunlit, unendurable pleasure—for hours, days, a summer, a whole lifetime, but it was impossible to do and perhaps, even, cruel to try. _Please_ , Crowley had said, and Aziraphale, who did not want it to end, but knew all the same that eventually it had to, had taken pity and touched him gently until Crowley fell apart into the cupped palm of his hand. 

Aziraphale wandered down the hallway into Crowley’s now familiar bedroom wrapped only in a towel. Distantly, he heard the sound of the shower start up again—Crowley had come in from the porch, then. He would emerge, soon, smelling of peppermint and sunlight, and perhaps, faintly of cigarettes—Aziraphale had seen him sneak one on the back porch as he waited for his turn in the bathroom. Crowley would come back from showering and then they would lie here, together, on the crisp sheets that had been washed after recent exertions, hung out in the fresh air yesterday to dry before being put on the bed this morning. It was, Aziraphale thought for the thousandth time in the past week, far more than he had ever deserved.

Aziraphale worked his toes into the thick carpet of Crowley’s bedroom and thought about how Crowley always seemed to find reasons to appear in Aziraphale’s shirts and jeans—oversized on his skinny frame. Well, two could play at that game. He threw open the top drawer of Crowley’s dresser and—

A blank shattered eye stared back at him. A ghastly sort of souvenir, a cracked mining headlamp, aluminum housing spotted with age, thirty year old elastic straps sagging amongst scattered socks and undershirts. There were screws at the back of it where, presumably, it had once connected to a helmet, left in pieces in the distant past. Aziraphale’s mouth filled with the taste of metal. He heard the whirr of the helicopter blades overhead, the whine of an electric motor, the slam of the cage door, saw the golden eyes rise up to meet his own as he had a thousand times in his dreams, as fresh and as vibrant as though he had lived it yesterday. 

And then the thought of another dresser drawer slid open, a line crossed, a violation of privacy Crowley’s secrets nestled inside. Was this punishment for that moment thirty years ago? The completion of a circle? Once again Aziraphale had peeked inside a drawer that did not belong to him and found, this time, not Crowley’s secret, but one of his own. He did not want to look; he could not look away. The eye of the lamp, blown out and blind, stared unseeing back at him. The edge of it was rimmed with dots of dark red. Rust? Blood? 

Aziraphale shut the drawer hard enough to jostle the dresser against the wall. He leaned against the dresser and breathed, trying to focus on the here and now. A breath in, the smell of peppermint, the soft carpet under his toes. A breath out—the sunlight slanting through the window, the smooth wood laminate top of the dresser. He was not in the old administration building. The air blowing through the bedroom was due to the breeze through the open window, the slow motion of the overhead fan. There were no helicopters, no sirens. What was done was done. There was nothing to be afraid of in this peaceful, warm room. 

Only—

Why had Crowley kept such a thing? He was happy here, wasn’t he? He owned his own farm. He was building his own airplane. His life was—good, wasn’t it? He had no trouble agreeing to a fresh start, a blank slate. He seemed to want it even, seemed as eager as Azirahale to let the past fall away. _Runway behind them._

Only—

The object in the dresser seemed to suck all the air out of the room, a spot of darkness in the sunny, placid afternoon. The whine of the motor, the slam of metal on metal as the cage door shut, the eyes which rose to meet his, the shattered eye in Crowley’s dresser drawer, Crowley’s eyes locked on his—

The door of the bedroom opened. Crowley was entirely naked, lit up by the muted sun that fell through the lace curtains of the bedroom, his one eye overflowing with affection. Aziraphale realized in that moment that he could never say what he had seen. He couldn’t ask him, _why did you keep such an awful thing?_

He couldn’t ask because the answer, whatever it was, would shatter the afternoon like the lens of a mining lamp, like the delicate orbit of an eye, like a glass of lemonade dropped on a concrete porch; splinter the golden, beautiful, suspended time of _now_ and transform it into _then_.

Aziraphale couldn’t ask about the top drawer of the dresser, but he couldn’t put it out of his mind. He reached out to Crowley. Crowley came to him, willingly enough. He couldn't stop running his hands over Crowley’s shoulders, his neck, the proud ridge of his nose, the knot of scar tissue where his eye had been. He leaned up to kiss him there and Crowley shivered and twisted in his grasp. 

“Jesus, you’re insatiable,” Crowley said, but he said it indulgently, as though he liked it, and pushed Aziraphale back on the bed, hands already wandering beneath the hem of the towel still wrapped around Aziraphale’s waist. Aziraphale let Crowley touch him, let grief sublimate into desire and it was good, it was better than good, even though he had finished so recently that it took forever and was nearly agonizing at the end, left his skin tender and raw. 

_How many times will he put his hands on me like this_ , Aziraphale wondered as they lay together, later on the crisp sun-dried sheets, sweat cooling between them. It was the echo of a question from an August long ago. _How many times will he let me touch him in return?_

It seemed, despite the lazy summer heat, the slow swoop of the fan above, the light, languid breeze, that there was an incredible urgency to everything they did together. Crowley’s hand tightened on Aziraphale’s hip as though he were thinking of having another go, which at this point was almost certainly physiologically impossible, but Crowley was stubborn as Hell, and Aziraphale knew, then, that he felt it too. The urgency. The time, rushing all around them, the understanding that they were not fixed points on the bank but rather carried, all too quickly, in the stream. 

Aziraphale didn't know what Crowley's plans were for the two of them when the summer ended. He was afraid to ask. He didn't even know what he himself planned to do—Gabriel’s job offer still sat, unanswered, beneath the roll top of the desk in the bookshop apartment. But he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would never be like this with anyone else. It would never be this good ever again.

***

They slept together, curled around each other on the scratchy sheets while the breeze blew in the open window smelling of the rich grasses in the meadow. 

At dusk, Crowley shook himself, rose and pulled on those same tight jeans to go down the hill and feed the animals. Aziraphale put on pants too—his own, he didn’t dare reach again for the dresser—and walked with him through the narrow, twilight hallway in silence. It was an easy sort of silence. He felt, for the first time perhaps, they understood each other perfectly. They were happy here, playing house together in this small riffle, an eddy in the stream of time. Happy stretching it out, spinning in the cool water without analyzing what brought them together, without questioning how the current might someday (the end of the summer approaching far too soon) pull them apart. Aziraphale tilted his face up so that Crowley could lean down and kiss him lightly on the lips before departing, the screen door banging shut behind him. 

Yesterday, Aziraphale had gone to Crowley’s garden, plucked up a basket of ripe tomatoes which sat, covered by a thin gingham cloth, on the sideboard. He set about washing and chopping them for dinner. He walked out to the porch, bare feet sticking on the dark tar, and clipped off a handful of the basil leaves which grew in abundance in a planter there. He chopped these too, into long fragrant ribbons, and diced up a handful of garlic which he set to sizzling in the pan. Crowley had taught him this; a simple tomato sauce to go over pasta. It was the first thing Aziraphale could say that he had properly learned to cook in years. 

The smell of cooking garlic filled the air. Aziraphale set plates and silverware on the wooden table and as he did so he noticed, not for the first time, the same small bottle of medication that Crowley had first showed to Aziraphale two weeks ago, innocuously waiting between the salt and pepper shakers to be taken every morning with breakfast. 

In the last fading light of the day, sated, wrung out, pleasantly aching in all sorts of places, the bottle of pills struck Aziraphale for the first time as a gift rather than a burden. He hadn’t thought that this would ever be possible, being together like this with anyone, least of all Crowely. He hadn’t thought it was possible and yet here they were, a week into this new life together. And it didn’t have to end when the summer ended. 

For the first time, Aziraphale allowed himself to properly think the thought. It could go on. Aziraphale could—could _stay_. 

As Aziraphale cautiously sought out the edges of the idea, the image flashed into his mind again—a shattered headlamp kept for all these years in the top drawer of a dresser. Other sense memories filtered back too—Uriel’s smile as he peeled an orange with sharp nails, the scent of citrus filling the office; the horrible lurch of the ground beneath his feet; the halogen shine of the emergency lights on Crowley’s face, slick with blood, as he turned it to look up at the second story window of the administration building. There was no going back to change the past. But here, and now, it might be possible for him to make amends. Aziraphale thought about the taste of Crowley’s skin, the odd, almost rubbery texture of his scar beneath Aziraphale’s lips. _I could spend the rest of my life caring for you_ , Aziraphale thought. _It would be enough. We would never have to talk about what happened. It would be enough, being together, like this. I would make it up to you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, which was mostly written during the actual summer (only to be published in February) was written with [this Orville Peck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSb8WFYSyGw) song in mind. 
> 
> I am still catching up on comments, I love and cherish every one! 
> 
> A quick note on updates: This chapter is the first in a series of four chapters that are meant to be read together. For that reason, I am hoping to update more frequently than every other week (state of the world dependent) for a while to make sure that I’m not leaving y’all in terrible suspense and/or confusing y’all with different timelines.


	19. Spring, 1985: Aziraphale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for being a wonderful beta and for helping me get unstuck when I got all tied up in trying to figure out some things about chapter structure a few days ago.

Crowley was already at the bookshop by the time Aziraphale arrived, pacing back and forth among the musty shelves on the third floor. 

“Brought the problem sets?” 

“Yes.” Aziraphale held them out. 

Crowley took them, ducked his head. “Good.” 

He sat on the windowsill to look them over. Aziraphale stood and watched and felt absurdly hurt that Crowley wouldn’t meet his eyes. Did Crowley regret what had happened in his kitchen? Aziraphale had tried to regret it all weekend, but he hadn’t been able to. Perhaps Crowley had been more successful. 

Crowley shuffled the papers in his hands. “These don’t seem too hard.” 

“Glad to hear it,” Aziraphale said, hating the stilted sound of his own voice. 

“Do you want to…” and then Crowley looked up, caught Aziraphale’s gaze, and his eyes were full of something that was not regret. “Do you want to come over here so I can show you how to do them?” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, and slotted himself in on the windowsill next to Crowley, thigh to thigh. 

“Great, well, um, the first one is just basic arithmetic….” Crowley said, and yawned and stretched, and when he settled again his arm was a warm trembling weight around Aziraphale’s shoulders. It was the oldest, most obvious trick in the book. It shouldn’t have been charming, it shouldn’t have been smooth, it shouldn’t have caused Aziraphale’s insides to flip over like they were doing loops in the sky alongside one of Crowley’s model planes. 

Aziraphale leaned in closer to Crowley’s side. Crowley’s arm tightened briefly around Aziraphale’s shoulders. 

“Right, ah, erm—” Crowley said, clearing his throat. “Is this...ah…” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, taking pity. “Yes it is.” 

“Oh,” Crowley said, cheeks tinged with pink in the gloom of the bookshop. “Good.” 

And that, Aziraphale supposed, was that. 

***

Aziraphale hadn’t known it could be like this. He had dated girls, of course. Cindy, who he had taken to the state fair, and Mary, who had gone to prom with him last year. But it had never lasted for long. It had always been nice, in its own way, but also the sort of thing he could put away in a box at a moments’ notice. When they weren’t together, he hadn’t thought of them. 

He thought about Crowley constantly. It was all consuming. He thought of Crowley’s clever hands late at night, in bed, and in the shower, and also his mouth, when he dared, although neither of them had even suggested the idea— 

But that wasn’t even half of it. He found himself consumed on a Friday afternoon by the memory of Crowley’s laugh. He laughed so rarely, but when he did it was from the belly, full and unreserved and unexpected. He laughed at Aziraphale’s jokes. He sometimes shot Aziraphale a secret, private sort of smile and had an even more secret smile that he only wore when he thought Aziraphale wasn’t looking. He wondered if Crowley would have laugh lines around his mouth when he was older. But all this was idle fantasizing. Crowley might have laugh lines, he might not, but it didn’t matter—Aziraphale would likely never see him again after this year. Even so, Aziraphale could not stop thinking of him, counting down the hours until they would be alone together, running his fingers over the light indent of Crowley’s pencil on the page as he copied over the problem sets from Crowley’s hand into his own.

Now, instead of a box in which everything could be neatly packed away, Aziraphale felt as though there was a pane of glass. There were two parts of him, and although they sometimes looked at one another through the glass, they did not recognize each other. Aziraphale watched himself with the football team and in church on Sundays and at home with Gabriel and his father picking at microwave dinners the way he might watch an actor playing a role in a film, and then the part that did the watching, the part of him in which everything that was real and honest resided, turned around and lay with Crowley on the dusty floor of the bookshop, daydreamed about his laugh, memorized the way the afternoon sunlight fell through every hair on his head. And these two parts, the hidden and the open, the quick live thing and its shell, needed one another and feared one another. 

***

In homeroom in March an announcement crackled over the PA system: _Congratulations to Eden High’s newest recruits to the armed services. Please stand in recognizing…_

The list went on. It always did. Every month it was a new list, students who had turned eighteen and immediately enlisted instead of finishing out the school year, students whose names Aziraphale had rarely known before. Now, he often recognized their last names from the personnel roster at the mine. The names marched on, subsided into the crackle of static, the shuffling of paper _...and finally, Anthony Crowley, who has been offered and accepted a position at the United States Air Force Academy to begin next fall. We thank the young men of Eden High for their commitment to our country and their service. The lunch menu for today will be…_

But Aziraphale was not listening. His heart was pounding in his ears, drowning out the bored voice over the PA. That couldn’t be right. Crowley would have told him, wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t Aziraphale have been the very first person he came to? Didn’t he know how happy Aziraphale would be for him? 

Aziraphale was happy, he _was_. Crowley deserved this. 

He looked for Crowley in first period calculus, but he wasn’t there. Aziraphale knew he wasn’t on the schedule today at the mine. He excused himself to go to the bathroom and found Crowley outside, loitering under the bleachers by the snowy football field, smoking a cigarette. 

"Why didn't you tell me?" Aziraphale asked. Crowley shrugged his shoulders up to his ears and didn't answer. 

“It’s such wonderful news,” Aziraphale said. “When did you find out?” 

“Last Saturday.” 

Nearly a week ago then. Aziraphale tried hard not to feel hurt. “Aren’t you excited?” 

“Yeah,” Crowley said, stubbing out the butt of the cigarette and immediately lighting another one. “I am.” 

Aziraphale didn’t understand why he was being like this. It was nearly enough to dampen Aziraphale’s own excitement, to raise a prickle of irritation on Aziraphale’s skin. But then, perhaps Crowley’s family was to blame. Aziraphale knew that Bee was bitter that Crowley wanted to leave. And Luke probably couldn’t care less, which must be its own kind of hurtful. 

"I'm really proud of you," Aziraphale said, trying to show how much he meant it. "I knew you could do it. I knew it." 

Crowley looked up at him, mouth parted. “Thanks.” 

Aziraphale glanced around and then leaned in to kiss him. Crowley jerked away. 

"No?"

Crowley swallowed, face pale. "I taste like cigarettes." 

"I don't mind, not with you." 

Aziraphale leaned in again and this time Crowley let him, kissed him back with more heat than Aziraphale was expecting. 

"We’re in public," Crowley said, blinking at him when he pulled away. 

Aziraphale glanced over the empty football field. "I don't see anyone around." 

"Still." Crowley took another drag on his cigarette. 

"Crowley, I—I just think you're absolutely remarkable," Aziraphale blurted out.

"Do you?" Crowley asked, as if he really didn’t know. 

"Of course I do. You're the most remarkable person I know, Crowley. I—I'm so very glad we’re friends." 

Crowley looked at him for a long time, a flush high on his cheeks, cigarette burning out in his hand. "Me too," he said eventually. "I'm very glad we’re friends, too." 

***

When Aziraphale thought back on that spring and summer, as he did often in the years that followed, he couldn’t help but catalogue all the signs he had missed. 

Gabriel and Uriel, bent over Gabriel’s desk, speaking in hushed voices that dropped off as Aziraphale approached to deliver a new set of completed calculations. _No that’s far too obvious we can’t do it that way—_

A phone call late one Sunday evening when Aziraphale was the only one in the office, bypassing the secretary’s desk and going straight to Gabriel’s private line. 

“Hello,” Aziraphale said into the receiver, not wanting Gabriel to come back to find he had missed an important call. “This is Wright Mines, Aziraphale Wright speaking, may I ask who’s calling.” 

There was static on the other end of line for a long time, and an odd sort of chill crawled up through Aziraphale’s bones.

“Aziraphale, that’s a familiar name. You’re the younger brother aren’t you?” 

“I—yes.” Aziraphale frowned. “Who is this?” 

“Ah, name of Chalky, please excuse my manners. We met at a dinner this past fall I believe.” 

“Yes, of course,” Aziraphale swallowed. “What can I help you with today?”

There was another long pause. “Just tell your brother I called,” Chalky said. 

“What message—” Aziraphale started, but the line had already gone dead. 

And then, of course, there were the problem sets. Odd problems really, nothing like the sort of problems Aziraphale would later see in introductory engineering courses. Hardly anything at all educational about them. Problems about the movement of topsoil and the economics of surface mining. Problems too about ventilation deep underground, and methane build up, and other things besides—topics related to codes and regulations that had both him and Crowley scrambling for any book that might help them late into the night. If it was any consolation—and it was some, although not much—Crowley didn’t notice anything amiss about the problem sets either. 

And so, as spring tumbled towards summer, Aziraphale, swept up in the first and only romance of his life, blithely contributed to its impending destruction. 

***

Crowley’s fingers stroked through Aziraphale’s hair. Aziraphale’s head was pillowed on the warm muscle of Crowley’s thigh. The steeple of the old church extended above into the blue sky, ringed with the green, new leaves of spring. It was one of the first warm days of the year. A redwing blackbird sang in the marshy ditch down by the road. Above him, Crowley was muttering softly to himself. 

“Colorado's pretty far from here ain't it? I mean, that's the whole damn point. Of course it's far away, why else would I have applied to the Air Force Academy? Could have applied to Navy, could have gone to Annapolis, right near College Park, just a few minutes really, away from the University of Maryland, but no, it’s too damn close to here, had to be far away—” 

“I'm glad you're going to get out of here,” Aziraphale said, muzzily, nearly lulled to sleep by the movement of Crowley’s fingers and the warmth of the sun. “You deserve it.” 

Crowley’s fingers tightened briefly in his hair, then started stroking again, coming around to rub behind Aziraphale’s ear with a bit more intent. Aziraphale leaned into it. 

“Still gonna be a while though,” Crowley pointed out. “Got all summer in Eden.”

“Mmm I bet we can make the time go quick,” Aziraphale said, and turned and rose to press his face to Crowley’s neck, letting his hand wander down the flat, extraordinary, planes of Crowley’s stomach. Crowley's hand tightened in his hair and held this time, lit up all the nerve endings on Aziraphale’s scalp, and it was good, it was good, it was good—

***

Crowley had tried to warn him, too. 

He told Aziraphale how angry Hastur was, Ligur as well. The whole lot of them. Jobs disappearing, shafts closing for good, no work, bad pay. High prices at the one store in town and high ground rent at all the mobile home parks and company-owned housing within thirty miles of town. 

But it was all the same sorts of things that Aziraphale had heard at the dinner table every night for eighteen years. 

“That’s nothing new,” Aziraphale said. “Hastur’s always angry.” 

Crowley shook his head. “I’m telling you, he’s talking different.” 

“Didn’t you say he was all bark and no bite?” 

“Usually he is. But this time the union’s agreeing with him, saying they might strike.” 

Aziraphale shrugged. “If they strike, they strike. We’ve dealt with strikes before. And anyway, aren’t you on their side? Why are you telling me this?” 

“I’m not on anyone’s side,” Crowley muttered. “Besides, I don’t want to see you hurt. Hastur doesn’t want to stop at striking. He wants to put a Molotov cocktail through the window of your house.” 

“I’d like to see him try,” Aziraphale snorted. “Gabe will kill him first.” 

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Crowley said. 

Aziraphale considered it, and then considered the curve of Crowley’s bicep. He let his hand fall on Crowley’s shoulder, dragged it all the way down to his elbow. 

“You’re not listening,” Crowley sighed. 

“You used to tell me I worry too much,” Aziraphale said. His hand traveled from Crowley’s elbow to his wrist. His fingers traced over the fine veins on the back of Crowley’s hand. “Now I think it’s the other way around.” 

“Maybe,” Crowley said, but he didn’t look convinced. 

Would anything have been different if Aziraphale had listened? Probably not. There was nothing he could have done, not about Hastur anyway. But the doubt remained. 

Would anything have been different? Aziraphale would never know the answer, but it was a question that would trouble him for the next thirty years. 

***

“Got a graduation present for you,” Crowley said, grinning, in the ruined church. 

“Oh you didn’t have to.” 

“I know. I’ve got one anyway,” Crowley said, and dropped to his knees on the wet earth, a parody of prayer. “Let me?” he asked, hands trembling on Azirahale’s belt, and Aziraphale curled his fingers in his hair and did. 

Later, Aziraphale went to a graduation party at Sandy’s where the beer and liquor flowed freely, as it always did. When he woke up it was the next day and he was in Crowely’s bed. 

“Did we?” he asked, wriggling on the bed, feeling for any telltale soreness, oddly disappointed when there was none. 

“No,” Crowley said. “You wanted to, but I’m not gonna do that to you when you’re shitfaced.” 

And this, too, was a gift. 

***

In June, Aziraphale did something foolish. He stopped by personnel with records for Dagon as he usually did, walking through the miners’ locker room to get there. But then, on the way back, he paused. The locker room was empty. Crowley’s things were there, tucked away neatly in his cubby; helmet, hi-vis jacket, self-rescue device. Aziraphale couldn’t explain the impulse later. It was not rational, it was not even sexual, which would have been easier, in some ways, to justify. 

He took the pen from the crisp white pocket of his shirt and scribbled a note onto the corner of one of the papers Dagon had just handed him. _Thinking of you_ , he wrote, and then after a brief pause, and before he could overanalyze the gesture, signed the note with a heart. He tore the corner of the paper off, folded it over itself and slipped it just behind the lamp on Crowley’s helmet. He glanced around again, but the locker room had been empty and still was; no one had seen him. And so, with one last look at Crowley’s helmet high on the shelf, he left the locker room and went back to the office. 

He would have forgotten he had done it, only the next day after they had gone over Aziraphale’s latest problem sets, and were moving towards other, more interesting activities, Crowley frowned at him. 

“You can’t do this,” Crowley said, holding up the scrap of paper. 

The air was redolent of honeysuckle which grew somewhere in the woods nearby. The days were long again, the nights warm. Crowley was very near and his lips were very red. Aziraphale had made them red just from kissing. On evenings like this, Eden felt very near to paradise indeed. 

“Why not?” Aziraphale asked, laughing. 

But Crowley’s face was serious. “You know why not. I mean it Aziraphale, you can’t. It fell out of my helmet in front of Eric today. I had to put my foot on it so that no one else would see.” 

And indeed, Aziraphale, looking closer, could see the faint outline of a boot mark, a dirty smudge on the center of the heart. The sight twinged in him, tamped down his good mood just a little. 

“You don’t have to hide it, it’s just a note,” Azirphale said, knowing he sounded petulant and not caring. “Everyone will think it’s from a girl.” 

Crowley sighed and smoothed out the paper in his hands. “No one will think it’s from a girl. Besides, you don’t think Hastur would recognize your handwriting? He’s the shift boss. He gets your personnel reports every week. He’s mean but he’s not dumb.” 

Aziraphale swallowed. He hadn’t, in fact, thought of that. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Crowley.” 

“It’s…it’s not that I—” Crowley’s face contorted through a series of expressions that Aziraphale couldn’t parse. “I wish—” he said, and then stopped. He smoothed the paper one more time between his index and middle finger, then tucked it away into the pocket of his jeans. “Come here,” he said, voice rough. 

Aziraphale went, eagerly, into the cradle of his arms. 

Later, they lay together on the grass. Twilight had fallen. The woods were still, but far from silent. The same red-winged blackbird as always called in the marsh below their little hill. Crowley’s fingers moved gently through Aziraphale’s hair. Aziraphale wished, fruitlessly, as he often did at these times, that they could stay like this forever, caught between day and night, between spring and summer, on a hillside frozen in bloom. 

Crowley’s hand stopped its motion in his hair. “They’ll kill me if they know we’re together,” he said. 

Aziraphale turned in his arms. “What?” 

“Hastur, his lot.” Crowley swallowed, face bleak in the gloom. “They really hate your family that much. If they found out I—” Crowley hesitated. “I’d be walking home one day, they’d pull up next to me in a truck, next thing I’d be in a ditch somewhere.”

“I’ll drive you everywhere.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous. Anyway, it’s not just Hastur I’ve got to watch out for. Your brother knows I’m part of Hastur’s crew, he’s got his guys watching me too. If he found out you were with me, I—” Crowley’s hand tightened on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “If he tried to hurt you, I would never forgive myself.” 

“Gabe won’t hurt me,” Azirahale said. “He’s family.” 

“You don’t know what he’s capable of,” Crowley said darkly. Aziraphale shook his hand off his shoulder. 

“You can’t talk about my brother like that.” 

“So you think he’d be happy if he knew about—” 

Aziraphale drew in a quick breath. “Don’t.” 

“—about me. About what you like to do with me.” Crowley continued as if Aziraphale hadn’t said anything. A hint of anger flickered in Crowley’s tone, something else beneath it too, hurt and sad. 

“Please don’t—” Aziraphale said. He searched inside himself for the glass dividing line that was always there, ever present, protecting both parts from each other. Under the onslaught of Crowley’s words it wavered like it was going to crack or disappear. “Crowley, drop it, please.” 

And then, amazingly, Crowley did. 

Crowley let out a deep sigh. “I’m sorry, Aziraphale. I didn’t mean to push. You know I…” he trailed off. “Doesn’t matter. It’s fine, we don’t have to talk about it...I just think we’ve got to be careful, that’s all. I don’t know what we would do if someone found out.” 

The dusk had slid into darkness as they talked; it was time to go home. That pane of glass was still there, inside Aziraphale. It had held, but now Aziraphale felt as though he and Crowley were on separate sides of it, as though Crowley’s words came from far away. 

Aziraphale stood, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. “No one’s going to find out,” he promised, and held out a hand to help Crowley to his feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	20. Two Picnics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some thirty year old secrets begin (finally) to unravel…
> 
> Thanks, as always, to [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for the beta read. 
> 
> Although this seems like an absolutely random fact, it may help for the purposes of one throwaway line of dialogue in this chapter for the reader to know that the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens football teams have a notorious rivalry. Pittsburgh is the closest major city to most parts of West Virginia, so even though the state doesn’t have an NFL team of its own, it does have a lot of Steelers fans. 
> 
> CW: There are some tough moments in this chapter. Namely, a coming out scene that doesn’t exactly go badly, but doesn’t exactly go well either, and implied homophobia surrounding that moment. There are also two unpleasant lines of dialogue, neither spoken by a canon character; one that implies generalized racism/xenophobia and another that implies classism. If you want to skip that part, stop reading at the paragraph ending “...turned towards the crowd—” and start reading again at the paragraph beginning “Had Crowley gone for a swim today?” 
> 
> This chapter also includes references to prior unhealthy alcohol use and short, mostly implied, sex scenes in the first and last sections. 
> 
> If you’re worried about any of the above, feel free to message me on tumblr (see endnote for link) and I will tell you in more detail what to expect from this chapter.

Early in July, they drove an hour to a state forest, hiked up a steep cliff in the dense pressing woods to watch a stream tumble over the side of a mountain. The waterfall was not particularly large, but it was very lovely and very secluded and Crowley, who had picked out the spot and treated it as a special sort of secret, was grinning ear to ear as he spread out their picnic blanket—a rare full smile that seemed reserved for Aziraphale alone.

They had brought a feast with them—all sorts of completely impractical foods that Crowley had insisted on picking out—chocolate covered strawberries and fussy little crackers with cheese and olive tapenade. He’d even brought a bouquet of flowers, sheepishly extracted from his backpack alongside a bottle of sparkling cider. Crowley really was a terrible romantic, and always had been, although he would never have admitted it and Aziraphale was far too polite to point it out. 

The flowers were a bit worse for the long hike uphill. Petals trailed all over the blanket and the grass as Crowley arranged them in a plastic cup in the center of the spread. 

Crowley opened the cider and then turned away to pour it. When he turned back it was with a plastic champagne flute held out in his hand, the kind that wouldn’t be out of place at an outdoor wedding. _Really now_ , Aziraphale thought, hopelessly charmed, _any old cup would have been fine._

He took the glass, letting his fingers brush Crowley’s on the stem, and sipped. The cider was fancy but non-alcoholic—Crowley had obviously guessed at Aziraphale’s lingering wariness of mixing fucking and drinking without having to be told. This tacit understanding brought with it a surge of anticipation ( _would_ there be fucking involved in this outing?) as well as the intensification of a nameless feeling Aziraphale had been having all week; gratitude crossed with the tender squirm of having been recognized and wanted anyway. 

The bubbles of the cider filled his mouth, the waterfall bubbled over the rocks, and the refrain that had been bubbling through his head since last evening surfaced again: _I could stay._

This thought, coupled with the setting—petals strewn everywhere, the rushing water, sunlight dancing on the grass with the motion of the branches of the trees high above, the wind scattering and reforming the dappled pools of shade—brought with it a wondrous happiness, so profound it was nearly relief. It was there, ever present, as they ate together and talked lightly of nothing. _I could stay, I could stay, I could stay._

And just when Aziraphale thought the day could not be better—when he was drunk on sunlight and non-alcoholic cider, and happiness, and fine foods, and most of all on Crowley’s company—Crowley leaned to him, vibrating with a secret sort of joy and said, "I've got a surprise for you."

"You do?” Aziraphale asked, breathlessly delighted.

"Back pocket of my jeans,” Crowley murmured, leaning in close.

Aziraphale let his hand trace the familiar curve of Crowley's body, fingers dipping inside the pocket to withdraw—

"A condom?” Reality crashed back down, shattering the peace of the afternoon, a mudslide down a stripped mountaintop. "Oh, Crowley it would be so lovely, so, so lovely but I just—"

"Shh relax,” Crowley murmured. "It's not for that. I was offering—” and now he looked, for the first time, uncertain, "I was offering to suck you. Through the condom, so there wouldn't be any worry."

"Oh,” Aziraphale turned the foil packet over in his hands. "You don't have to, my dear. I don't need you to reciprocate.” But even as he demurred, his mind raced ahead to the image of Crowly's head bent between his legs, long red hair spread on Aziraphale’s thighs.

"I know I don't have to, I want to."

"Won't it be unpleasant, with the condom?"

The corners of Crowley's mouth softened. "No, not if it's you."

"You want to—now? Here?"

"Sure,” Crowly said, still soft. "Anytime, anywhere. But here's as good a place as any."

“I—alright. Yes.” Aziraphale let himself be pulled to his feet, let Crowley walk him backwards into the dense green canopy of leaves. The ever present kudzu vines flourished here, draped in a heavy curtain over the branches of the trees that overlooked the waterfall. Crowley parted this curtain with his hands, drew Aziraphale into the green darkness by the trunk of an old oak tree.

“Lean back here,” he murmured, and pushed gently, gently—he was always so gentle even when (especially when) he was being forceful—up against the bark of the tree.

Crowley dropped to his knees. It was twilight here, and somehow very private inside the little bubble of space marked out by the tangle of vines and branches. Even the waterfall, which rushed very near, sounded distant to Aziraphale’s ears. 

“Your poor knees,” Aziraphale said before he could stop himself. “Oh, the ground’s all muddy.”

Crowley smiled up at him. Some of the bravado of before seemed to have dissipated and he was looking at Aziraphale now with a quiet expression that Aziraphale feared to place. “I don’t mind.”

And then, as though he were embarrassed about the sincerity in his tone, Crowely ducked his head and pushed it against Aziraphale’s thigh. Aziraphale watched his shoulders rise and fall as he breathed. His hair was going grey, not just at the temples, but here at the crown of his head too, strands of silver twined in amongst the red. Aziraphale looked down at these strands, an odd tugging behind his breast. He dropped his hand, slow, gentle, to the top of Crowley’s head. His hair was sunwarmed, smooth and soft as ever. Aziraphale stroked through it with his fingers, once, twice. Crowley let out a shuddering breath against his thigh.

Then Crowley’s hands were at his belt, clever fingers undoing it quickly, letting the leather hang from Aziraphale’s belt loops, fluttering to the zip of his fly. Crowley bared him gently to the air. It ought to have felt scandalous, so close to a public trail, out in the open. But they weren’t really in the open, were they? They were enclosed here in this small green oasis, cut off from the rest of the world, their own private paradise. _Eden_ , Aziraphale thought, looking up at the branches because it seemed safer than looking down at Crowley, busying himself with the foil packet. 

Crowley’s mouth was warm and wet even through the latex of the condom. Azirphale sucked in an unsteady breath. Over the years he had convinced himself that he wasn’t missing much, that this act couldn’t possibly have been as good as he remembered it, only—it was. 

Had it been this good twenty years ago? Thirty years ago, the first time anyone had ever done this to him, the first time Crowley had done it to him?

 _Yes_ , he thought, curling his fingers into Crowley’s hair, tugging a little. Crowley made a noise low in his throat and took Aziraphale deeper. _Yes, it had been._

Afterwards, Crowley stood, flushed and triumphant, hair mussed from Aziraphale’s hands and Aziraphale couldn’t stop himself from pulling Crowley in, kissing him even though the odd, oily taste of latex hung around his lips.

“Can I…?” Aziraphale asked, reaching, but Crowley stepped away.

“Ah, I wanted—” he said, and stopped.

“Yes?” Aziraphale said. _Ask me, anything. I’ll do anything to bring you pleasure._ “What did you want?”

“I thought…that thing you did to me at the pond…” Aziraphale could see Crowley’s blush even in the dim light filtering through the canopy. “Maybe when we get home you could…”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said again, kissing him. “Anytime, I’ll do it anytime you want it, darling—”

“Well,” Crowley said, sounding pleased and a little out of breath. “I’ll shower first.”

“If you want,” Aziraphale leaned in to kiss him again, and then again, and again in the green dreamlike light of the forest. 

Crowley deserved everything he wanted. Aziraphale would give it to him if he could.

The wind brushed the vines that hung over the branches. It was private and lovely beneath this shifting curtain, but even so, the thought struck Aziraphale—didn’t Crowley deserve _more_? Deep in the forest, with no one nearby but the birds that flitted two and fro on the branches, a different set of images flashed through Aziraphale’s mind, tinged with the golden halo of desire. Baseball games and movies at the theater and fancy dinners and state fairs and shopping malls; crowded places where he could pull Crowley close, hold his hand, kiss him without a care as to who was watching. It was wonderful to be here together, apart from the world, but Aziraphale wanted to be in the world with Crowley too. The shock of this realization raced through him. 

It must have shown on his face because Crowley pulled away and asked, “what?”

“Nothing,” Aziraphale said, but he was thinking about their drive to Ohio a month ago, about Crowely saying, _I don’t want to be someone else’s secret._ What they were doing here wasn’t a secret exactly, but it wasn’t in the open either. It felt fragile, crystalline, familiar—the way it had when they were teenagers. Only then, there had been a reason to keep it quiet and now—who could hurt them? Luke was dead and gone, and Gabe had moved on to other mountains in other towns. The mine in Eden had been closed for years. 

As they collected the remains of the picnic and folded the blanket together, the refrain arose again in Aziraphale’s mind, followed now by this new idea: _I could stay. I could stay. I could stay. But not as a secret._

***

“There’s an outdoor Shakespeare play this weekend in Charleston,” Crowley said, scrolling through his phone over breakfast at the bookshop the next morning. “They're doing _Hamlet_ , which honestly sounds too gloomy for the summer, but we could get tickets for tomorrow if you like.” 

“Since when do you know anything about Shakespere?” Aziraphale laughed, looking up at Crowley over the top of the print newspaper he was reading. “You skipped every other English class when we were kids.” 

Crowley stiffened briefly, then shrugged, an offhand fluid motion. “I’ve picked stuff up here and there. Anyway, do you want to go?” 

“It would be lovely, but I can’t. I’ve got Gabe’s picnic.” 

“What picnic?” 

“I didn’t tell you? Gabe always does a picnic around the Fourth of July. I’ve gotten out of it every year since college but I don’t see how I can this year, now that I... well….live here, essentially.” 

Crowley cocked his head to the side at this turn of phrase. 

“I’m sorry, I’d much rather go to the play,” Aziraphale said, quite truthfully. 

“Hmm,” Crowley said, a thoughtful, soft sound, and then a mischievous grin curled around his lips. “What are you going to wear?”

“What do you mean, what am I going to wear?”

“To Gabe’s picnic.”

“Something like this probably,” Aziraphale gestured to the plain white polo shirt he’d put on in anticipation of a visit from the electrician today. 

“Open your shirt,” Crowley said, grin still hovering on his lips. And then added causally, almost as an afterthought, “if you want.” 

Aziraphale raised an eyebrow, but his hands were already at his collar, his breath was already quickening in his throat. “Well?” he asked.

Crowley inhaled one long slow breath, tilted his head to the right and then left. The air in the room had thickened. 

“Pull your collar down,” Crowley said eventually. “The left side.”

Aziraphale hooked his fingers in his shirt, bared the top of his chest to the unwavering intensity of Crowley’s expression. 

“Good,” Crowley breathed, and then he leaned in closer and brought his mouth to Aziraphale’s left breast. He kissed Aziraphale’s skin softly at first, just the barest hint of teeth, but the scrape of them was enough to set Aziraphale’s heart beating fast as a rabbit’s. 

“It’s the first thing in the morning, what are you—” Aziraphale started, but his voice sounded breathy and interested even to his own ears. 

Crowley tilted his head up at Aziraphale, silent, lips still pressed to skin. Asking permission.

Aziraphale drew in a quick, dizzy breath, and gave up all pretense that he didn’t want this, whatever it was. “Yes,” he heard himself say. “Please.” 

Crowley didn’t hesitate. Sharp teeth sank into Aziraphale’s breast, a tongue pressed behind them, sucking, worrying the flesh. Aziraphale gasped at the sudden bloom of pain, the even more shocking flare of desire that burned in its wake. His hand found its way into Crowley’s hair, tugged at the strands, not to push him away but to to pull him closer. Crowley growled against his skin and bit harder. The press of his teeth throbbed, sharp, relentless, and exquisite. Aziraphale breathed through the pain, cast his eyes around the entirely ordinary kitchen, out the window to the empty street, up to the mountain in the distance, green and teeming with life, and offered himself up to the benediction of Crowley’s stinging kiss. All too soon it was over.

Crowley drew back, wiped a hand over the back of his mouth, then reached out to button Aziraphale’s shirt with careful fingers. The ghost of his teeth lingered on Aziraphale’s skin. Aziraphale smoothed over the left breast of his shirt and was rewarded with an aching twinge. By tomorrow he was sure it would bloom into a deep purple bruise.

“Something to remember me by,” Crowley said, studiously casual, although a flush had risen high on his cheeks. “When you’re making small talk with Gabe.”

And then, as though he hadn’t a care in the world, as though he hadn’t made Aziraphale half hard in his trousers with barely a touch, as though he hadn’t done something weird and possessive, as though it wasn’t even weirder that Aziraphale had so obviously _liked it_ , Crowley picked up his phone and started scrolling again. 

“Looks like they’re doing _Hamlet_ all next week too,” he said. “Shall we go on Wednesday?” 

***

In the late 90s, Gabe had moved to Morgantown and bought the most ostentatious house Aziraphale had ever seen. It towered above the other houses on the suburban cul de sac, a mismatch of Greco-Roman columns and Tudor styling and five different kinds of dormer window. When approached from the long driveway, it gave off two overwhelming impressions—first, that it was designed by a computer rather than a human architect (Aziraphale, having worked with more than half a dozen architectural firms, was increasingly convinced that there was some degree of truth to this conjecture) and second, that it was obscenely expensive. 

The house had a yard and a white picket fence and a multi-story playset in the back that Gabe’s two boys never used—they were happier catching the frogs with five legs and extra eyes which spawned in the swampy crick behind the subdivision. Behind the white picket fence and behind the stream, the land gave way to uncultivated meadow and then forest which gradually sloped upwards into the low ridgeline of the mountains. Perhaps if the house had been built somewhere featureless and grey any number of its sins could have been ignored or forgiven. But here, against the natural beauty of the ridge—solid, elegant, and green—it looked especially flimsy, not really a proper house at all, just a patchwork of plywood and architectural grade foam. 

The driveway was already full of trucks by the time Aziraphale arrived, lifted 4x4s making his SUV look small by comparison. In the backyard, people milled about in brightly colored polo shirts and boat shoes. Aziraphale stood at the gate and thought about turning around and fleeing, but it was too late; Gabe had already seen him. He gestured him over with an expansive wave of his hand. 

“Aziraphale! Buddy! Glad you could make it! I’m grilling up the burgers now, beer’s in the cooler.”

Aziraphale pulled at his collar, felt the twinge of Crowley’s bite beneath the fabric of his shirt. “Thanks.” 

“I’ve got to stay with the grill, but go get yourself a drink, make yourself at home!”

Aziraphale wandered to the cooler and looked longingly at its contents, shining bud light cans scattered like jewels in the ice. He didn’t particularly like cheap beer, but it wasn’t about liking really, it was about making it through a picnic with people he hadn’t talked to since high school. But that was exactly why he didn’t trust himself to have even one. He dragged his hand through the ice water and thought about how easily the afternoon could disappear into the haze of cold beer and warm sunlight, stilted small talk becoming effortless as one beer became three and then five or seven. But then the evening would wind down and the gentle buzz would wear to a throb and Aziraphale would be stuck here, too drunk to drive, committed to spending the night in Gabe’s ugly house which was even uglier inside—all beige carpeting and floral sofas. He rummaged in the cooler below the beers, drew out a coke in an old-fashioned glass bottle instead, and turned towards the crowd—

“—this is my Elise, she’s in third grade now, Morgantown Catholic. They start prepping them for college in Elementary School now can you believe it? Seems early but you know how it is—

“—moved outta Eden first chance we had, there’s just nothing there anymore—”

“—got my degree in geology from WVU—go Mountaineers—and worked in South Dakota for a while, lots of opportunities out there in natural gas but you know it ain’t like here, no mountains, all sorts people out there, the kind of people you don’t want around your family, if you know what I mean. Your brother got me back here, offered a nice gig in good old fashioned American coal—”

Aziraphale slipped in and out of different streams of conversation. He felt as though he were floating, drifting on the surface of Crowley’s pond. It was easier than he expected, even without a beer in his hand. He nodded at all the right places, laughed at old inside jokes, leaned down to shake the sticky hands of children. 

“—good money in flipping houses. Wanted to start up a reality show, you know, like that cutesy couple in Texas, even wrote to some studios but no one wants to watch a bunch of fucking hicks get makeovers of their trailer homes—what Elise? Aziraphale knows what this place is like, he growed up around here—alright, yes, I’ll watch my language in front of the kids—point is, no studio wanted to buy it, but hey, take my card anyway, I bet I could help you fix up that old bookshop real nice. I could gut it for you. I’d give you a great deal—” 

Aziraphale took the card although he was not really listening. The sun beat down on his back. Sweat dripped down the back of his neck. 

Had Crowley gone for a swim today? Probably. He might even be lying on the dock now, drying off in this same sunlight, looking up at the same clear blue sky. It was a lovely day. It would be even lovelier at Crowley’s farm with the fresh scent of the cut grass in the meadow, and the wind whispering through the trees, and Crowley there beside him, perhaps quiet, perhaps talking to him about the next stage of the Bentley’s construction. He had started to frame out the wings, and they looked especially elegant to Aziraphale in their half-finished state, like the wings of a bat—fine aluminum bones covered over by a special kind of material that was not quite plastic and not quite fabric. It was miraculous really, that something so simple, made by human hands over the course of a few years was all it took to escape the crushing pull of gravity. Aziraphale had thought about saying so to Crowley, but Crowley would only laugh at him and tell him it was all physics, nothing miraculous about it at all. Aziraphale imagined arguing with him lightheartedly. _Physics can be miraculous too_ , Aziraphale would say, pushing him down on the grass, covering his thin, sprightly body with his own, _let me give you a practical demonstration, let’s focus, just for now, on the coefficient of friction, tell me this doesn’t feel miraculous to you—_

“—Steelers defensive line looking good this year, guess I can’t talk to you about that though, you’re in bed with the enemy these days—” 

“What?” Aziraphale startled, surfaced, pulse leaping into his neck. He was talking to a thin, balding man a few years older than him. One of Gabe’s friends from high school. Tim? Michael? “Excuse me, what did you say?” 

“Your brother tells me you live in Ravens territory now. Behind enemy lines so to speak.” 

Oh, they were talking about _football rivalries._ Aziraphale exhaled and said something about passing yards and relaxed back into the flow of conversation, let it sweep him away while his mind wandered back to the pole barn and the pond and the lithe muscles of Crowley’s forearms—

And so the afternoon went on. The shadow cast by the asymmetrical roofline of Gabe’s house grew longer and longer until the guests were slowly peeling away, the sound of trucks starting drifted over on the summer air which had grown cool with evening. The party was ending. Somehow, Aziraphale had survived. 

The golden evening light lent even Gabe's manicured lawn an air of quiet, beautiful mystery. Aziraphale, leaning against the picket fence at the corner of the patio, rubbed at the indent of Crowley’s teeth on his left breast through his shirt and let himself feel the faint swell of arousal, hold the sensation inside his chest with his breath and then release it. In its wake, it left something else, a burning satisfaction, a warmth Aziraphale did not dare examine too closely, a confidence he rarely felt but so often admired in others.

Aziraphale got to his feet and made his way across the patio to where Gabe stood cleaning the grill. Aziraphale reached into the ice bucket and drew out another coke to give his hands something to do, but did not open it. Instead he watched the rhythmic bunching of Gabe's perfect shoulders as he scoured the charred flesh off the grill with the brush.

They were the only two left on the patio. Gabe’s wife had gone in to clean the kitchen. Sandy and his wife—the last of the guests to leave—had made their excuses ten minutes ago, tottering off a bit too unsteadily for Aziraphale's comfort towards their truck. Gabe's boys were roughhousing by the garage: their happy shouts drifted over on the evening breeze. The patio lights flicked on, having apparently reached the required ambient dimness to trigger their automatic sensors. _Time to beat back the night_ , Aziraphale thought. But the night was everywhere already. The cicadas sang, lightning bugs rose in the trees, the mountains loomed over Gabe's square of perfectly cut grass, over the whole of the impeccably neat cul de sac, larger and more mysterious than anything humans had built or ever would build. These hills were here first and would be here long after everything else was gone; watching, holding their secrets like leprechaun's gold. Gabe and men like him devoted their whole lives to tearing the land apart in search of that mysterious treasure and what did they have to show for it? A few handfuls of black dust which translated, in the end, to an architectural disaster—eight bedrooms, twelve and a half baths, made out of such shoddy material that if it were slated to be torn down tomorrow Aziraphale would save nothing from it with his colored tape. Distantly, Aziraphale felt sorry for him.

Against the vastness of the lowering night, the scraping of Gabe's brush on the grill, even the bunch of his wide shoulders under his white shirt, felt insignificant, a breeze across the surface of a tranquil pond. A feeling of peace and calm rose up in Aziraphale. He twisted the bottle of coke in his hands, but did not unscrew the cap, felt the cool condensation flow over his fingers in the humid air.

"Gabriel, I'm gay,” he said to that broad back.

The scraping of the brush stopped, then started up again. Gabe did not turn around. His white shirt shone, luminous in the twilight. "What about it?” he asked. 

Aziraphale twisted the bottle again, too hard this time. The cap popped off and sent sweet, bubbling liquid spilling over his hands. 

"You knew?” 

“I assumed.” Gabe shut the top of the grill with a clang and finally, _finally_ turned to face Aziraphale. "I'm not...I'm not good with this stuff Aziraphale. I don’t know anything about it. I figured you had other people to talk with about...about that sort of thing.” 

All that sneaking around and Gabe had known anyway. Gabe had known, _did_ know, and Aziraphale was somehow still standing here on his lawn as if nothing had changed. All those years of feeling like this secret was the reason his skin pricked when he was in Gabe's house, like this was the thing that hung heavy in the air between them, choking out all the oxygen when they talked. Azirahale ought to be relieved. But all he felt was confusion, the sudden disorientation of having missed a step on the stairs. 

“You offered me a job.”

“Am offering. I am offering you a job. Present tense." 

“I thought—” 

The bitten off sentence hung in the air. Gabe frowned. 

“You thought I didn’t know, and that if I did I wouldn’t want you to work for— You thought that I...you expected that I—I would treat you like that. Jesus.” 

Gabe crossed his arms and leaned back against the fence to stare at the sky. Aziraphale followed his gaze. Vega had risen, the first and brightest star in the summer triangle. It twinkled above them, an unblinking eye staring down on their island of aggressively manicured green, on an uncomfortable conversation thirty years overdue. 

“You're family Aziraphale,” Gabe said, eventually, voice rougher than Aziraphale was expecting. “I know we ain't always been close, but your...your lifestyle...doesn't make you any less family. And this is a family company. We’re both getting older, dad's gone...it would be good to have you back. I know I asked you to take some time away from the company, but it was never about—never because—” 

“Because I'm gay?” Aziraphale said, when it became clear that Gabe wasn't going to finish the sentence. 

“Right.” Gabe cleared his throat. “That. It wasn’t about that.” 

_What was it about then_ , Aziraphale thought, _say it you coward_. And then, he immediately felt ashamed. Gabe was no coward, at least, no more than he himself was. 

“If you had someone—” Gabe said, clearly uncomfortable. “I don’t know how I would explain it to the kids but you could...It would be fine by me if you brought them— _him_ I mean—to things. Like this.” 

Aziraphale thought about bringing Crowley here, for a picnic, or Thanksgiving dinner, or Christmas even, and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he never could. Maybe if it had been someone else. The accountant at his bank who had made a pass at him only to be gently rebuffed, the contractor who had given Aziraphale his business card and winked, any number of people from Aziraphale's other life in DC, might have, eventually, been welcome at Gabe's table. Maybe with some hemming and hawing, a pretense of being just good friends or roommates kept up for the children, but invited nonetheless. Not Crowley though. Gabe’s cheek still bore a scar—small, nearly invisible if you didn’t already know it was there—from the stone in Bee's ring where she had slapped him across the face thirty years ago. Never Crowley. 

“Look, I—” Gabe shuffled his feet on the concrete faux stone patio. “I know high school wasn’t easy for you. I’m sorry if I gave you a hard time.”

 _What else are you sorry for?_ Aziraphale wanted to ask, but the question stuck in his throat. 

Gabe clapped him on the shoulder awkwardly and went inside. Aziraphale waited on the patio as night fell over the mountains and the valley, over the crick with the mutant frogs, thirteen thousand square feet of shoddy craftsmanship, the rectangular strip of grass in the wilderness, and wondered— _if being gay isn’t the reason I don’t belong in Gabe’s house, then what is?_

***

This question followed Aziraphale on the drive back to Eden, haunted him as the road sped beneath the tires of his car and the headlights illuminated the otherworldly silhouettes of the kudzu choked trees. 

But as the distance from Morgantown grew, and the distance to Eden shrunk, Aziraphale’s thoughts turned to something more pleasant. He pressed against the bruise on his breast in the shape of Crowley’s mouth, thought of the crinkle of a condom wrapper in his hand, the immediate gut jarring assumption he had made there by the waterfall— _he wants to fuck me_. The barb of desire lodged deep in his insides. _I want to let him_.

Before he could overthink it, Aziraphale took his phone out and dialed the number that he still, for whatever reason—romance, convenience, a sense of irony—had saved in his phone as _repairs_. When it started to ring, he put the phone on speaker on the seat next to him.

“Hi,” Crowley answered on the second ring.

“Hi,” Aziraphale said, suddenly nervous. “I’m on my way back now.”

“Oh? How was the picnic?”

“Absolutely dreadful, I’d rather not talk about it.”

There was a pause. “Alright,” Crowley said.

“I…I thought of you the whole time,” Aziraphale confessed to the dark interior of his car. “I just wanted to call and tell you I’ve been having a lovely time with you. Cooking together, the waterfall, the picnic you set up, the…the other things too. Swimming, being with each other—” Aziraphale swallowed. “‘I think you’re absolutely remarkable, Crowley. I’m so...I’m so very glad we’re friends.” 

Another pause, longer this time. “Bet you say that to everyone once you’ve had your tongue up their ass,” Crowley croaked eventually. 

Aziraphale exhaled, let the road unspool before him, empty and dark, like a blank slate in the yellow light of his high beams. Something vulnerable lurked beneath Crowley’s crude humor. Aziraphale could pretend he hadn’t heard it, but—

“No,” Aziraphale said, soft and fervent. “No, I don’t say that to everyone. Not even close. You’re the only person, I’m afraid, to whom I would consider saying such a thing.”

“Well,” Crowley stretched the word out, a long jumbled vowel halfway between awkward and pleased.

“There’s something I wanted to ask,” Aziraphale cleared his throat, an image stark in his mind: the bottle of pills Crowley was taking, casually resting on the kitchen table up next to the salt and pepper. The shock of realization, the entirely unearned gratitude— _we could do this, we could really do this, for the rest of our lives_. He wanted it. He wanted that future, he wanted it not to be too late. He wanted it with an ache that was as powerful as grief.

“Go on then,” Crowley said, a hint of wariness in his voice. “Ask.”

“My doctor’s appointment, for my HIV, is coming up next week. On Friday in Baltimore. I wondered if you wanted to come, make a weekend out of it. We could stay overnight, get brunch in the morning with some friends in DC. What do you think?”

“I—yes,” Crowley said, sounding surprised, as though he hadn’t expected that to be what Aziraphale wanted to ask. “Yes, of course. I’ll see if my neighbor can come over and do the barn chores for a few days.”

“Good, good,” Aziraphale said, heart hammering in his chest. Crowley was going to come with him. Crowley was going to come with him to see his doctor, who was going to draw his blood for another viral load and then, and then—

But it wouldn’t do to get ahead of himself would it?

“Well, that was all,” Aziraphale said, awkward now that Crowley had agreed just like that. “Goodnight then.”

“Goodnight,” Crowley said. He sounded like he was smiling. “Oh and Aziraphale?”

“Yes?”

“I’m very glad we’re friends, too.” The call ended.

The road hummed under the tires of Aziraphale’s SUV. He still felt tense, strung tight, wishing he had something to drink waiting for him back at the bookshop, grateful that he did not. He missed Crowley terribly even though his voice had just been in his ear, even though he had just seen him yesterday and would see him again tomorrow. In the darkness of his car, another memory of the past few days, one he had been trying to put out of his mind, surfaced and clamored for attention. 

They had gotten home from the waterfall and Aziraphale had bent Crowley over the kitchen table, had eaten at him until he was shaking and nearly crying. Afterwards, they had sunk together onto one of the creaking wooden chairs, Crowley nestled, boneless, on Aziraphale’s lap. In the comfortable post coital haze, absurdly proud of how wild he had made Crowley for it, Aziraphale had felt suddenly brave, had said:

“There’s something…there’s something I should tell you.”

Crowley had shifted, looked around at him.

“Is there?” he asked.

“Yes, I—it’s very difficult to say—”

“Maybe you shouldn’t then.”

Shouldn’t what?

“It's nice like this, isn’t it?” Crowley said. He said it lightly, but the contented expression had fled from his face and left in its place something like alarm, something like sorrow. “It’s nice like this. The summer air, everything blooming and fresh. Re-doing the bookshop. Having—having fun together. Still got a month or so left. Why…why do anything now…to ruin it?

 _Why ruin it indeed_ , Aziraphale thought. They had agreed not to talk about the past. They had both said it in their own ways. _A blank slate. Runway behind them_. There was no reason to resurrect old ghosts. Wright Mines had moved on to other mountains; Eden Mountain had given up all her coal. What would it accomplish to say anything now, except to make them both miserable? Aziraphale was glad Crowley had stopped him. Aziraphale was glad. Even so, as Aziraphale drove through the night, the hairs on the back of his neck rose to stand, the moon glimmered ghostly over the mountains in the rear view mirror, and he felt as though a great force—a wave in a prehistoric sea—was amassing behind him, powerful, inexorable, gathering speed, towering above his little SUV on the dark country roads and the question now was not if, but when, it would break…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter sponsored by [ McMansion Hell](https://mcmansionhell.com/) (not actually...just kidding...unless?) 
> 
> Thanks, as always, for reading!


	21. Summer, 1985: Aziraphale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) for the beta read. 
> 
> CW: references to anal sex

There was something Aziraphale wanted. There was something he wanted from Crowley. He didn’t know how to ask for it. But _oh_ how he wanted it. It was what he imagined, now, whenever Crowley’s hands were on him. What would it feel like? He had tried it on himself, but hadn’t gotten very far, squeamish of his own fingers, the soap in the shower not slick enough to ease the slide. 

There were mechanics to it; similar to the ones Crowley was always going on about—lift, weight, drag, thrust—but applied in an earthly rather than heavenly realm. Aziraphale didn’t quite understand them, but he understood enough to know that it would be impossible without the right supplies. 

The first days of July in Eden were always hot, sticky. Aziraphale breathed a sigh of relief when he entered the cool air conditioning of the general store, bell tinkling gently behind him. He perused the aisles for a long time, working up his courage, before he picked up a small tube of vaseline from the cosmetics aisle and carried it with him to the register. Aziraphale’s heart beat in his chest loud enough that he worried, absurdly, that the cashier could hear it, but there was nothing unusual about his purchase. There was no reason at all for the cashier to think—

“I’ve got chapped—chapped lips,” Aziraphale heard himself say, strangled and unnatural, an excuse no one had asked for. The cashier only shrugged. 

“Want a bag for this?” 

“No thank you.” Aziraphale slipped it into his pocket. 

The weeks ticked by; the dog days of summer, hot and listless. Even work at the mine had slowed. There were fewer jobs than ever for Aziraphale to dole out on Sunday mornings. Hastur and Ligur glowered on the street corner outside the liquor store every time Aziraphale drove past in the company truck, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was preoccupied instead with the slow, steady countdown of days before Crowley was set to get on a flight to Colorado Springs, before he was leaving here for good. Crowley deserved it. Crowley deserved to be a pilot, to have the life he had dreamed of having. But even so, watching him as he sprawled languid amongst the weeds in the ruined church, a drop of sweat pooling in the hollow of his throat, or paced with restless energy amongst the trees, Aziraphale was struck with a sense of loss so acute he wanted to vomit. Crowley deserved everything, yet a part of Aziraphale, a monstrous part of him, wanted to write to the Air Force Academy to tell them they had made a terrible mistake. 

Late at night when he tossed and turned, the uncharitable thought arose in Aziraphale’s mind; _if he had been rejected, I could have kept him_. In those moments of weakness, in the darkness of his bedroom, he imagined a different version of the world: Crowley holding a crumpled letter in his hand, dejected, Aziraphale’s hand on his back, comforting him, saying it wasn’t so bad, offering—although he had no power to offer—a full time foreman’s position at the mine. Aziraphale coming back here during the summers between years of school in Maryland, working at the same problem sets and rosters he was already familiar with, picking up with Crowley right where they left off—with The Arrangement and with everything else. And maybe by the time Aziraphale had graduated, they both would have some money and one of them could buy a house—nothing special, just a place with a bed that would be large enough for two. But here the vision always ended. What was the point of imagining? They couldn’t live together, and anyway, Crowley hated it underground and hated Eden and Aziraphale was the worst kind of selfish for wishing, even a little bit, that things might have turned out so that he would be forced to stay. 

***

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said one day in late July, emboldened by the passage of time. “Crowley, let’s go to your house.” 

They had just finished up a set of problems, tricky ones involving the proper placement of roof bolts. Usually, this was the time when Aziraphale would tuck the papers away and then close the distance between them. Instead, he stood. 

“I don’t know,” Crowley hesitated, still sprawled out on the grass. “When I left to come up here, Bee was at work and Luke was God knows where. But either of them could come back whenever.” 

“Please,” Aziraphale said, hands in his pocket, turning over the small tube of vaseline. He hadn’t eaten all day, afraid of...biological inevitabilities, not yet aware the sorts of tricks he could employ to avoid them. He felt faint, nauseated. He couldn’t tell if it was hunger or desire or nerves. “Please. The summer’s almost over.” 

Crowley titled his head at Aziraphale. Aziraphale’s pulse beat in his throat, found its mirror in the fast flutter at Crowley’s neck. Had Crowley guessed what Aziraphale was offering him? Did he know what he wanted? 

Crowley watched him for a long time, then stood in a fluid motion. “Yes,” he said. “Alright.” 

They walked down the hill in silence. Crowley reached out and sought Aziraphale’s hand, held it tight in his as they walked. Crowley had been making these sorts of gestures more often as July rushed on to August. Tangling his fingers with Aziraphale’s, pulling him close just to hold him even after they had already had their hands all over one another in other places, kissing Aziraphale gently on the temple for no reason at all. Aziraphale liked this attention, wanted it even, with a confusing sort of hunger only tangentially related to lust. Now, the curl of Crowley’s fingers around his own sent a rush of feeling that was not quite desire, but just close enough to it to seem permissible, surging through Aziraphale’s veins. 

(By the time Aziraphale recognized this feeling, it would already be too late. It would be longer still before he could name it, years later in a hospital overlooking the Chesapeake, as Tracy—just out of school, barely even a doctor—asked him for an emergency contact he couldn’t possibly provide. “Do you have family I can put down?” she had asked, “a lover?” 

It had been a windy day. Little waves were visible, even from a distance, on the surface of the water, miniature mountain ranges that rose and fell and reformed as he watched. “No,” Aziraphale had said, and it hadn’t been quite true. What he had meant was, _not anymore_.) 

Crowley let go of his hand. The gravel crunched under their feet, the sun baked down, glancing off the tin roofs of the mobile homes. No one was out. It was too hot to sit on the porches, but still, they hurried past the neighbor’s trailers, fearful of the blank eyes of the windows. They paused at the entrance to Crowley’s while Crowley dug in his pocket for the keys. Aziraphale felt faint again, yearning and dizzy in a swooping, pleasant sort of way; a cold sweat of anticipation beginning between his shoulder blades despite the heat of the day. 

Crowley’s fingers shook as he fumbled with the keys in the lock. He opened the door, gestured Aziraphale inside. The interior of the trailer was musty with old cigarette smoke, dim after the brightness outside. Aziraphale blinked in the darkness as Crowley shut the door behind them, half turned back towards the entrance, and then, without warning, there were lips on his, insistent, hungry, kissing him eagerly as if Crowley wanted this—Aziraphale in his house, sober and willing—just as much Aziraphale himself did. Aziraphale let himself be kissed, pulled at the corded muscle of Crowley’s back until they were pressed together, chest to chest, hips to hips. Crowley made a noise into his mouth, a wordless, needing sound and pushed him further into the house. They stumbled together, still kissing, into the kitchen. One of Aziraphale’s hands went into Crowley’s hair, the other darted to his own pocket, checking that it was still there, that tube of vaseline. He was going to bring it out, he was going to press it into Crowley’s hand. He wouldn’t have to ask; Crowley would know what he wanted. Crowley would know what to do. Crowley would lead him to that narrow bed in his empty room, would lay him gently down on the scratchy sheets and make—

A thump sounded. Not a particularly loud thump, but one which sent a shockwave through the little trailer all the same. 

Crowley froze at the noise, every muscle in his body tensing against Aziraphale. Slowly, filled with a terrible sort of dread, Azirpahale raised his face from where just moments before it had been pressed to Crowley’s neck, biting kisses into the soft skin below his jaw. 

Bee stood by the table, her backpack at her feet where she had dropped it in surprise. The red plaid of her Burger King uniform appeared to Aziraphale somehow oversaturated, horrifically cheery in the airless kitchen. A buzzing started up in Aziraphale’s ears. He forced himself to raise his gaze to her face. 

She stared back at him, eyes fixed and dark, nothing in them but pure, snarling hatred. Her mouth opened and through the buzzing in his ears, Aziraphale heard her voice rise like a swarm of wasps, swirl itself into two words, as viscous as bee stings, as heavy as gravestones. “Get. Out.” 

Aziraphale fled. 

***

Crowley met him at the church, same as usual, the next day. Aziraphale’s heart leapt like a hare with the relief of seeing him there. He had been afraid he wouldn’t come. 

“Is she going to tell anyone?” Aziraphale asked.

“I don’t know.” Crowley didn’t have any new bruises that Aziraphale could see, but the skin under his eyes was dark from lack of sleep. He looked exhausted, lost. _No_ , Aziraphale wanted to plead. _No. Of the two of us, you’re the one who has confidence. You’re the one who’s strong._ “I don’t know,” Crowley said again. “I don’t think she will, but I don’t know.” 

“What did she say to you?” 

Crowley didn’t answer. He had pressed a hand to his lips and paced up and down the aisle of the ruined church. “I just don’t know,” he muttered. “I just don’t know what we’re going to do.” 

“She’ll keep it secret,” Aziraphale said with a confidence he didn’t feel. 

“I can’t believe she found out. I can’t believe we were so—” 

Crowley ran his hands through his hair and tugged at it. His cheeks were flushed a blotchy red, and he was breathing quickly, restless, moving in circles between the weeds and pews. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said.

“—she wouldn’t have to tell anyone on purpose, she could just say something offhand at her job at the Burger King or at the bar downtown—” 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said again. 

“—sees me with you again, or even knows I saw you, don’t know what she’ll do to me—” 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, louder. “Crowley, would you come here?” 

Crowley came closer, closer, drifting towards Aziraphale until Aziraphale could fold him in his arms. Crowley pressed his face to Aziraphale’s neck, and abruptly fell apart. He took great heaving breaths against Aziraphale’s skin that turned into full body shudders, not quite sobs or gasps, but some horrible combination of both. Aziraphale didn’t know what to do; he had never seen Crowley like this. He smoothed circles on Crowley’s back, held him tight, rocked him until his breathing slowed and gentled. 

“What are we going to do?” Crowley said, wet against Aziraphale’s neck. 

“We could stop,” Aziraphale said softly, because he knew it ought to be said, even though the suggestion alone made him clutch Crowley tighter to his chest. 

Crowley took another heaving, shuddering breath. “I don’t want to stop.” 

“I don’t want to stop either,” Aziraphale said, still soft. “We just have to make it through. Just a few more weeks now, anyway, just a few more weeks until you don’t have to worry about any of this anymore, until you can leave here for the Air Force.” 

For some reason, this was the wrong thing to say. Crowley shuddered harder than ever, clung to the back of Aziraphale’s shirt with a desperate strength. 

“Easy,” Aziraphale said, because he didn’t know what else to do. He didn’t know how...how to _comfort._ “Easy.” He cupped the back of Crowley’s neck in his hand, brushed kisses, light and chaste, to his temple, his hairline—kissed Crowley the way Crowley sometimes kissed him, gentle, with infinite care but no real heat behind it. It seemed to work; Crowley’s breathing evened out, his grip on Aziraphale’s shirt relaxed slowly. Aziraphale held him as the summer evening turned to night around them. Aziraphale held him and held him and allowed himself to feel, for the first time since the screen door of Crowley’s trailer banged shut behind him, the stirrings of relief. Bee hadn’t said anything, and likely wasn’t going to. They were going to be alright. 

(He had thought, then, that the danger lay with Bee and Hastur and Ligur, with Crowley’s talent for getting in trouble, with his own selfishness, his own inability to be contented with their backwoods fumblings, his desire for more and more and more.) 

“Easy,” Aziraphale said, in the place of any other words that he could have used to express what it meant to him to have Crowley in his arms in the fragrant woodland night. He brushed his lips over the thin skin of Crowley’s closed eyelids. “Easy. It will be alright.” 

(He hadn’t known, then, that the real danger lurked in the quiet, well-organized office in the administration building; hovered around the precise, angular notes Uriel, the chief engineer, made on his clipboard; was stored in the filing cabinet where Gabriel kept all of Aziraphale’s completed problem sets; whooshed slowly through the dusty tunnels where it was always night.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I am catching up on comments, I swear!! I treasure each and every one, even if I do not reply in anything approaching a timely fashion. 
> 
> While you’re waiting for the next chapter, please allow me to recommend this absolutely fantastic fic that just finished up posting, by my beta, Anti_Kate. It is gorgeously written and haunting (literally). You can read it here: [ The Ordinary World ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27107878/chapters/66193867)


	22. A Hard Town by the Sea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is long; I just couldn’t help myself. However, as my excellent beta [ Anti_Kate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anti_kate/profile) reminded me, one of the strengths of fic as a genre of writing is that it allows authors and readers to linger in intimate moments. With that said, I hope that this chapter begins to earn the “this is a story about healing” tag (and there is much more healing, of course, still to come).
> 
> CW: stigmatizing/unpleasant medical experiences; references to cancer, HIV and injection drug use; fleeting discussion of prior unhealthy alcohol use; fleeing discussion of prior unpleasant (but consensual) sexual experiences; fleeting reference to earlier transphobic dialogue; explict sex

In the half dark of the morning, Aziraphale climbed into the passenger seat and handed Crowley something over the center console of the truck. A tartan patterned thermos.

Crowley cradled it gently. Liquid sloshed. "What's this?"

"Coffee, for the trip," Aziraphale said far too brightly for five thirty am. "It's very kind of you. Getting up so early, driving me. Coming with me."

Crowley wanted to protest that it wasn’t kind, it was just what anyone would do for their—their what? His mind skipped over the word, rejected any of the standard options. Boyfriend? Partner? _Lover?_ Better to say nothing at all. 

Instead he ran his fingers up the side of the thermos. It looked like the sort of thing a housewife would pack for her husband to take to his construction site in 1950. It ought to come with a baloney sandwich and a note stashed between the cup and the lid: "Take care on the job, thinking of you honey, xoxo." Crowley fought the absurd urge to unscrew the top and check.

(Aziraphale had left him a note like that once, a very long time ago, tucked behind the headlamp on Crowley’s helmet. It had been a foolish, dangerous thing to do. Crowley had stomped on it as soon as it fluttered to the concrete floor of the locker room, and they had quarreled about it the next day at the church. But later that evening, after they had fought and made up, Crowley had extracted the small scrap of paper from the pocket of his jeans, smoothed it over and wished he could erase the dirty mark of his boot over Aziraphale’s sloping hand, wished he could ask Aziraphale, _when you signed it with a heart, did you mean it?_ ) 

Crowley cleared his throat and put the thermos in the cupholder. “Shall we?” 

They drove into the rising sun, chasing the light east across the mountains. Two lane roads turned into highways, which rolled and dipped smoothly through the hills. There was no traffic—too early even for the long haul truckers to be up out of their sleeping cabins. Dawn touched the mountain-tops, gilded the windmill blades that swooped slow and inexorable through the day and night. The light fell on Aziraphale’s face as he dozed in the passenger seat, turned every one of his eyelashes gold.

The land flattened out; rolling hills gently evening into the coastal plain, houses and buildings becoming more dense until they were driving down a wide thoroughfare through high buildings. Seagulls called outside. Crowley rolled down his window while they idled at a light. A salty breeze wafted into the cab of the truck. In the distance, between buildings, the morning sunlight glimmered on the Baltimore harbor. 

“Keep going straight,” Aziraphale said, “and then left in just a bit.” He wore an inscrutable expression and Crowley wondered, not for the first time, why Aziraphale had brought him here. Was this meant solely as a romantic weekend getaway or was it something more complicated? Would Aziraphale ask Crowley to wait outside with the truck, like Agnes always had, while he met with his doctor? 

Evidently, he wouldn’t, because when they parked in the hospital garage, Aziraphale dithered by the rear bumper instead of going inside. “Are you coming?” 

“Yeah,” Crowley said. “Yeah, if you want.” 

The smell of the antiseptic, which was the same everywhere and hadn’t changed in forty years, clung to the inside of his nose as they walked through the building. Crowley wasn’t good at this part, wasn’t good at hospitals or doctors or tests. He didn’t know what Aziraphale wanted from him here. Hadn’t he been going to these appointments for years and years all alone? He didn’t need Crowley. 

Only, didn’t he? Crowley pictured him, sitting stiff, straight backed, and afraid in the uncomfortable waiting room chair with no one nearby to comfort him if the news was bad. He wanted, suddenly, to reach out and clutch Aziraphale’s hand, here in this fluorescent waiting room, with strangers all around them. He thought Aziraphale might let him, he thought Aziraphale might want that too, a reminder that he _wasn’t_ alone, not this time. He flexed his fingers, gathered his courage, but in that moment a man in scrubs appeared and called out, “Mr. Wright?” Aziraphale stood smoothly from the chair and Crowley trailed after him as the nurse led them further into the clinic. 

***

‘I’m Doctor Potts.” The woman’s handshake was firm, businesslike, at odds with the blonde hair that frizzed all around her face and the eccentric, chunky frames of her glasses. “But you can call me Tracy. Everyone does.” 

She didn’t look like any doctor that Crowley had ever seen. There wasn’t a white coat in sight. There _was_ a stethoscope, slung around her neck like an afterthought next to three layers of beaded necklaces. If Crowley had met her in the wild, so to speak, he might have guessed that she was a middle school art teacher, or perhaps, an amatuer actor. Here, in this white, windowless box of an office she looked just as out of place as Aziraphale who was perched, still in all his layers, on the crinkling paper of the examination table. 

And yet, a genuine smile spread over Aziraphale’s face at the sight of her. He looked more relaxed than he had since they had entered the hospital. 

“Aziraphale, hun, it’s so good to see you. I got your message that you’d be in West Virginia for most of the summer. I hope the drive wasn’t too bad.” 

“Not too bad at all,” Aziraphale said. “We’re staying overnight and going to DC tomorrow morning.” 

“What a nice holiday,” Tracy said, tapping away at the computer. “And how’s West Virginia been treating you?” 

Aziraphale shot a glance at Crowley from under lowered eyelashes. “Significantly better than anticipated,” he said, and blushed. 

And so it went on. Crowley stopped paying attention once they got talking about medical sorts of things—this and that dose of this or that medication, a neurology visit in the fall for some side effects from _another_ medication—questions and answers and then more questions. 

“Ok, let’s do a little exam,” Tracy said, and Aziraphale obligingly tugged at the ends of his bowtie, opened up his waistcoat and his shirt and slipped them off, pulled off the undershirt too and handed the bundle over—still warm, smelling of his skin—to Crowley. 

Crowley had seen him naked countless times by now. But there was something different about this, about the way the unnatural indoor light fell on his pale skin, about the visible goosebumps on his forearms from the air conditioned air, about how very dressed Tracy and Crowley were, about how very undressed he was. Aziraphale looked strangely small, although that was a ridiculous idea—he’d always been a large man. He shivered as Tracy’s stethoscope touched his chest. 

“I know it’s cold, hun, I’m sorry.” 

(Last week, after a late morning swim, they had lain together on the sun warmed dock. Crowley had rolled onto his side, and then rolled again so he was lying on his stomach, half on top of Aziraphale. He’d put his ear to Aziraphale’s chest, heard the heartbeat there steady, slow, and sure, at one with the sunlight and the smell of the water and the breeze in the trees. Was Tracy hearing that same heartbeat now? Physiologically, she must be, and yet it was somehow hard for Crowley to imagine.) 

Tracy put her hands on Aziraphale’s belly, prodding and poking and Crowley wondered for the first time if the reason Aziraphale had never called him, never asked for his help when he was diagnosed and afterwards, had not been—as Crowley had assumed—some sense of superiority or any sort of awkwardness about how things had ended between them. Perhaps, Aziraphale had been trying to protect him. The thought clenched in his gut, made him shiver along with Aziraphale at the press of the doctor’s cold hands. 

“Everything looks good to me,” Tracy said, snapping her gloves off. Aziraphale climbed down from the examination table to sit in the chair next to Crowley. He reached for his clothes and Crowley handed them over gladly. 

“Do you have any other questions for me?” Tracy asked. 

“Ah, I do actually,” Aziraphale said, pulling his undershirt over his head and then shrugging into his shirt, already looking more like himself. “I have a question about, ah, well, it’s a bit delicate...” 

“I can leave—” Crowley started to say, rising from his chair, but he was stopped by Aziraphale’s hand, just two fingers really, resting ever so lightly at the pulse point on his wrist.

“No, stay,” Aziraphale said, “please.” Crowley stayed.

The doctor looked between him and Aziraphale. Her mouth opened as if she wanted to say something, then thought better of it.

"It’s ah, about my sex life you see. Our sex life," Aziraphale corrected himself, and the change of pronoun hit Crowley in the chest like the shockwave of an explosion. "...is, ah, evolving. I wanted to ask you about it, if it's not too much trouble."

"Of course," Tracy scooted her chair away from the computer to face them both directly. _Ah, so she’s one of those_ , Crowley thought, _the kind that really want to let you know they're listening_. "You can ask me anything, you know that, Aziraphale. That's what I'm here for."

Aziraphale sat up a little straighter in his chair, and this itself was a tell. Aziraphale’s posture was always good, but it became impeccable when he was nervous. Crowley let his hand drift into the space between their chairs, as casually as he could manage. The backs of Aziraphale’s fingers bumped gently against his before Aziraphale turned his palm, took Crowley’s hand, and held on. "Crowley and I… " Aziraphale said, seeming to gather his courage, "...have recently become intimate." He hung his head as though expecting a blow.

"Oh hun," Tracy said, scooting a little closer on her chair. "That's fantastic. How have you been...intimate so far?"

"Ah," Aziraphale's hand twitched in Crowley's grasp as though he itched to twist the ring on his finger. "Touching each other mostly. Oral. _All_ kinds of oral.”

"Sounds lovely," Tracy said, smiling at them both.

“No condoms or any other...barriers, except when I’m the...ah...receiver. Then I wear one so he’s not...exposed to any...fluids." The words seemed dragged out of Aziraphale. 

Tracy nodded. 

"I don’t know what’s safe," Aziraphale finished quietly, biting his lip. “I just don’t know…” He glanced over at Crowley, just a quick dart of his eyes. Crowley squeezed his hand. “...I just wanted to be sure. Before...before we do anything else.” 

“Well,” Tracy looked at them over the top of her middle school art teacher glasses. “Aziraphale, first let me say it’s wonderful that you’re taking such care with each other. Really.”

She turned to Crowley, who squirmed under her level, kind gaze. He didn’t do well with doctors at the best of times, and he didn’t have a read on Tracy at all, although Aziraphale trusted her, so that was something at least.

“Crowley isn’t it?” she asked. “Could I ask you a few questions?” 

“Yeah,” Crowley mumbled, shy at being addressed so directly. This appointment wasn’t meant to be about him, it was meant to be about Aziraphale.

“Crowley have you talked with anyone about medication you can take that can help protect you, if you’re having sex with someone who’s positive?”

“Oh, um, yeah—” Crowley dug in his jeans pocket with the hand that wasn’t clutched in Aziraphale’s grasp. “—went to the clinic in Morgantown a few weeks ago before...before we, um, started. They checked for everything—all came back negative—and they gave me this—” Crowley handed over the bottle of pills he had brought along with him just in case. “Is that the right thing? They weren’t very...” he trailed off, searching for the right words.

(The cold metal chair in the over-air conditioned waiting room in a drab outbuilding of the hospital in Morgantown. That same harsh antiseptic as always and the memories which came with it—his mother’s face, pinched and grey with pain, a group of men in long white coats huddled outside his room, talking in hushed voices about things like _enucleation, facial reconstruction, skin grafts_ , Agnes leaning her weight on him, light as a bird, as they left the hospital together for the last time. The medical student at the clinic had taken one look at his skinny frame and asked him twice about drugs and then peered accusingly at the insides of his elbows as she rushed through a perfunctory physical exam. Then the doctor had come in, a harried looking man who made eye contact only with the computer and read off his test results like he was sorry.

“You’re HIV negative now. You ought to be careful. We can get you into a treatment program—”

“I’m not—” Crowley had tried to say, but he faltered, sure that anything he might have said would have been insulting. He wasn’t using, but so what if he had been? There still wouldn’t have been any call to treat him like this. And anyway, if he protested too much, he would get asked about what he _was_ doing to put himself at risk and then he would have to answer questions about Aziraphale which he didn’t want to do. But it didn’t matter anyway; the doctor kept talking as if Crowley hadn’t said anything. 

“—if you’re going to take risks, here you can fill this at the pharmacy.” A piece of paper, pushed roughly into his hands.

And then a shame that he hadn’t felt in years, not since he had promised himself there was nothing wrong with who he was, as he waited in line at the pharmacy, sandwiched between two overweight men in John Deere hats picking up their diabetes and high blood pressure medications. The sideways glance of the pharmacist at her colleague as he handed over the slip of paper. The dawning realization: _is what it’s always like for Aziraphale?_ )

“....they weren’t very thorough.” Crowley finished, not meeting Tracy’s eyes, but looking instead across the room at a small drooping pride flag affixed to the corner of a bulletin board underneath a flyer for a Juneteenth barbeque that had not yet been taken down although the event was weeks ago. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry hun,” Tracy took the bottle from him and slid on a pair of reading glasses to peer at the label, then handed it back. “Yes, that’s what I would have given you too. You’re taking it regularly?”

Crowley nodded.

“Well then,” Tracy leaned back in her chair and looked between the two of them. “Nothing is ever a hundred percent certain of course, but, Aziraphale, you’re virally suppressed and Crowley’s very well informed, and already doing everything I would suggest. Obviously, the medication Crowley is taking hasn’t been around for very long, but all the early studies are overwhelmingly encouraging. I think you two should be safe to do whatever you like together.”

“So, oral’s alright then?” Crowley asked slowly. “Me on him, I mean? Without a condom?”

“I would say so,” Tracy smiled at him. 

Something complicated was happening in Crowley’s chest. He had accepted it, unquestioningly, when Aziraphale told him that there would be limits to how they could be together, the same way he had accepted Aziraphale’s request not to bring up their past on the very first day they had been reintroduced. He hadn’t expected the rules to change. 

“It’s rare even for people with active infections to transmit HIV through oral sex,” Tracy continued, seemingly oblivious to the complicated cascade of feelings that her words had set off. “And Aziraphale’s chance of passing it on is even lower given how little of the virus is in his blood and the fact that you’re also taking medication. Honestly, even anal sex without a condom would be quite low risk for you two.” 

“Gosh,” Crowley said, completely overwhelmed.

Next to him, Aziraphale let out a choked off little sniffle. Wordlessly Tracy held out a box of tissues, but instead he produced a handkerchief, an actual handkerchief— _my God_ , Crowley thought in despair and adoration _how is it possible that this is the man I’ve fallen in_ —and used it to dab at his eyes with the hand that wasn’t currently cutting off circulation to Crowley’s fingers.

“Take all the time you need, love,” Tracy said, reaching out to pat his knee.

“I’m sorry, this is ridiculous,” Aziraphale said with a little laugh. “I’m entirely ridiculous, this is good news I mean, but still it’s just…”

“Sometimes good news is just as hard to process when you’re not expecting it,” Tracy said. “I’ve seen every kind of reaction under the sun, there’s no right or wrong way to feel.”

“You’ll check my viral load again?” Aziraphale asked, tucking away the handkerchief. “Just to be sure?”

"Of course. I'll see what I can do to get the bloodwork expedited. Might even come back this afternoon. I would love for your boys to have a nice night on the town, not have to worry about a thing.” She winked at them, actually winked. Crowley gaped at her. Where had Aziraphale _found_ this doctor?

They stood to go. A nurse arrived to take Aziraphale to get his bloodwork done. As Crowley shuffled towards the waiting room, Tracy cleared her throat. 

“A word, Mr. Crowley?” 

Crowley paused in the doorway of the examination room. Tracy was still sitting at the computer, her blue eyes bright behind her glasses. 

“I’m Aziraphale’s doctor,” Tracy said, “but I’ve been his doctor long enough that I’d also like to think I’m a friend. I met him when I was just a year out of medical school. Do you know how many of my HIV patients from that year are still alive?” 

Crowley shook his head mutely. 

“One. Just him. He’s been through a lot. _We’ve_ been through a lot together. Just be careful with him. He’s more fragile than he seems. Be good to him,” she said sternly. “He deserves it.” 

“Oh my God,” Crowley said, understanding dawning. “Are you giving me the, _if you hurt him, I’ll kill you_ speech.” 

“Do I need to, young man?” Tracy asked, looking at him sharply over her glasses. Crowley rapidly revised his mental picture of her from _middle school art teacher_ to _middle school principal_. 

“No ma’am,” he said. 

“Good.” Tracy said. “Now, shoo, go find your boy. I’m sure he’s done with phlebotomy by now.” 

Thoroughly intimidated, Crowley wandered in the direction of the waiting room. 

After that it was a rush of picking up prescriptions—the pharmacy was in the clinic itself—checking out, validating parking, and finishing up paperwork on Aziraphale’s end, and a lot of toe tapping and staring at the ceiling and reading trashy magazines on Crowley’s.

“I can’t believe all they had to read was _Cosmo_ ,” Crowley said as they stepped out onto the hot Baltimore afternoon. A car honked nearby. In the distance the low wail of a siren started up. 

“Oh hush,” Aziraphale swatted at him with the rolled up visit summary they had given him at the front desk. He seemed lighter in an indefinable way. The laugh lines around his mouth and eyes looked deeper, the frown lines were less pronounced. He looked more like the young man who had been walking in the rain, varsity letterman jacket draped over one arm, after lending his truck out to a soul in need. “You know as well as I do that you love a good gossip column. You always have.”

Crowley followed Aziraphale down the street towards the parking garage, afraid he had a terribly soppy grin on his face and unable to wipe it off and even more unable to care about how deranged it probably looked on his scarred features. 

“By the way,” Aziraphale turned to him, suddenly serious, “we’re not having sex without a condom. I hope you know that.”

“Ok,” Crowley said, and then the words filtered through his brain and caught up to him. “Wait, but you mean…we _are_ going to have sex then? I mean, not that we haven’t already been having sex, great sex actually, but you mean like, um—?” Crowley made a crude sort of gesture with his hands.

“Providing my test results haven’t changed and you’re amenable.” A slight tightening around Aziraphale’s mouth, a lingering flash of doubt. “I’d like that very much.”

“Oh,” Crowley hardly knew what to say. “Well, um, good. Yep. That’s good then. Very good. So, um—how were you thinking? You can have me, or the other way round?”

“—Ah, the other way around, if…if you don’t mind. I haven’t stopped thinking about it, since that first night together, in the bookshop.”

Improbably, Aziraphale blushed. _He’s had his tongue all the way up my asshole and this is what he gets bashful about?_ Crowley thought. _Impossible_. It made sense, though, in a way. Doing and saying were very different things for Aziraphale. He had after all been doing a lot and saying very little all of high school. That had been the problem in the end, Crowley had thought certain things were implied when they weren’t. No matter. Crowley could say enough for both of them. “If I don’t mind?” Crowley asked, incredulous. “I’ll fuck you six ways from Sunday, then you can have a go at me.”

“Don’t be foul,” Aziraphale said, but the corners of his mouth had quirked up. 

“You like it.” 

***

The hotel was the nicest place Crowley had ever been. 

“You seriously helped remodel this place?” Crowley asked, incredulous, as they walked on the soundless carpet towards their room. 

Aziraphale fiddled with his bowtie, “well, yes. Although remodel is a stretch. It was an old pier out into the harbor with a ruin on top of it. Essentially we remodeled the pier, but almost everything else is new construction except for the facade.” 

“Gosh, it’s beautiful,” Crowley said, dragging a hand along the mahogany trim that lined either side of the hallway. Their room was even nicer, massive and airy with a floor to ceiling window that opened out to a balcony overlooking the harbor. The king sized bed was draped in linens and fluffy pillows so blindingly, perfectly white that Crowley worried he might smudge them by lying down.

“I think this whole room is bigger than the house I grew up in,” Crowley croaked, trying to make it a joke, but Aziraphale’s face took on a pinched look.

“I’m sorry I know it’s terribly ostentatious, I’m sure I should have picked a different place, only—” Aziraphale’s soft hands twisted together, worrying the ring around his little finger. “Only I thought, well it’s silly I guess, but I thought this is a bit like a romantic get away and I had some favors I could call in with the renovation firm to get a free room. I can see now, it’s far too much, I’m so sorry—”

Crowley reached across the space between them, stilled Aziraphale’s hands with his own. “Didn’t mean it like that,” he said, the roughness of his own voice catching him by surprise. “I like it.” 

Crowley wandered to the balcony and stepped outside. Aziraphale followed him, fixing his cuffs, which he had unbuttoned earlier to have his blood drawn. Crowley had the sudden urge to kiss him there, on the soft skin inside his wrist, but Aziraphale flicked the button closed before he could do anything about it. 

“I’m glad you like the hotel,” Aziraphale said. “You don’t know what a nightmare this place was to rebuild.”

“Oh?”

“Some of the pilings in the harbor were rotted out. We had to sink new ones. We had to bring in a specialized underwater engineering firm to do the construction. They found a canon down there from the War of 1812—it’s in the bar on the first floor, I can show you later if you like—but mostly it was a complete headache.”

“Well the result is great.”

“I suppose.” Aziraphale’s blue eyes looked sad. “This place was in disrepair for years, and now it’s usable again, which is something. But—” he broke off, looked out at the factories across the harbor. “When I was working on this property, I spent some time in the city archives, digging up old photographs and newspaper clippings for reference. When this pier was first built, it was a ferry terminal for people to go back and forth across the harbor. And then later, there was a playground on the rooftop for neighborhood children, a radio show hosted inside. And now who comes here?” Aziraphale heaved a sigh. “Millionaires on their way between New York and DC. Doctors and lawyers taking their dates to the bar.”

Crowley didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing, just stared out at the choppy water.

“I came out to Gabe,” Aziraphale said suddenly.

“What?” This was so unexpected, and such a change of subject, Crowley hardly knew what to say. “When?” 

“After the picnic, everyone else had left. I just told him, plain and simple.” 

“How...how did he take it?” 

Aziraphale laughed, brittle and humorless. “He already knew. He’d guessed it apparently. I suppose I haven’t been as subtle as I thought. It just oh—it was so odd, Crowley. I’ve dreaded him finding out for years and years...but in the end it turns out he didn’t even care.” 

“Is that a bad thing?” 

Aziraphale sighed, frowning down at the waves that licked at the pilings below them. “I thought...I don’t know, I thought that if he knew about that part of me, he would either disown me out entirely or accept me and he...he didn’t do either really.” 

Silence stretched between them, and then, in a much smaller voice, barely audible above the breeze, Aziraphale said, “I always thought it was the reason I didn’t belong. But it’s not, you see. Because I told him and he didn’t care and _I still don’t belong_.” 

Crowley understood why Aziraphale didn’t belong. He had understood it when they were teenagers, at that very first meeting on the side of the road when Aziraphale had said, earnest and worried he had done something wrong, _if you must know, I lent the truck out_. Crowley had recognized it again the first and only time he had set foot in the Wright family house, opulent, luxurious, but dead as a mausoleum. Crowely knew why Aziraphale didn’t belong, and he also knew he shouldn’t say anything about it, because Aziraphale didn’t like it when Crowley ran his mouth about Gabriel and the whole rotten lot of them, only Crowley had no common sense and never could keep quiet when he had an opinion—

“You don’t belong because you’re kind,” Crowley said. “They ain’t kind, you are. That’s the difference.” 

A younger version of Aziraphale might have bristled at this, might have said, _Gabe is kind, you just don’t know him_. But this Aziraphale, in the broad Chesapeake sunlight only sighed, and shook his head and didn’t say anything at all. 

“I’m proud of you, really,” Crowley said, although it felt trite to say. “It can’t have been easy, telling Gabe.” 

“You know,” Aziraphale turned and smiled at him. “It wasn’t nearly as hard as I dreaded it would be.” 

Aziraphale’s pinky ring clinked on the metal railing of the balcony as he moved his hand over to cover Crowley’s. And for a long moment it was perfect like that, the somewhat brackish breeze off the harbor, the distant sounds of people milling about on the brick waterfront below. The warmth of the sun, the warmth of Aziraphale’s hand under his. Crowley thought about saying it then; it was on the tip of his tongue even, but Aziraphale stretched next to him, withdrew his hand, and said, “I got us tickets for a movie. I hope that’s alright.” 

“Sure,” Crowley said, letting the moment slip away. It would return, he felt certain, the way a wave returns again and again to shore. “When does it start?” 

***

The movie Aziraphale had picked out for them had been an excellent choice. A John Waters film just campy enough for Aziraphale, just goth enough for Crowley, showing at a beautiful Art Deco theater that Aziraphale had also had a hand in restoring. Crowley was sure he enjoyed it, but two thirds of the way through, Aziraphale's warm hand pressed into his and he forgot to pay attention to the rest of the film.

Aziraphale held his hand as the lights came up, was still holding his hand and humming the main theme from the movie as they exited the theater. Outside, on the hot pavement, Crowley couldn't help but reach out to pull Aziraphale into a kiss, surprised and elated that Aziraphale let him, kissed him back, right there in front of strangers with cars whizzing past on the busy street.

"I'm crazy about you," Crowley couldn't keep himself from saying as he pulled back. "Absolutely fucking crazy about you. You know that right?"

A flash of something (guilt? grief?) moved across Aziraphale’s features and then it was gone, eclipsed by a beaming smile so ecstatic, so genuine, that the other emotion might never have been there at all.

"I do know," Aziraphale said, quietly radiant. “I do.”

***

They drove back towards the hotel for dinner. It was silent in the truck except for the staticy hum of the radio. Aziraphale had draped his hand on Crowley’s thigh, low enough to be decent, but high enough to suggest a kind of intimate knowledge, to send a low hum of electricity thrilling through Crowley’s spine.

“Dear, that’s a red light,” Aziraphale pointed out. 

“I know, I know I’m stopping.” But really, how was he meant to drive under these conditions?

Aziraphale was checking something on his phone, unusually distracted. “Oh,” he said suddenly looking up, “Crowley would you pull over? I’d just like to pop into the CVS for a second.”

Crowley sat in the car and waited while Aziraphale went into the pharmacy on the corner. He couldn’t stop his knee from bouncing. The skin on his thigh where Aziraphale’s hand had been felt scalded, sunburned through his jeans. Crowley rolled down the window and fished his cigarettes out of his back pocket to calm the odd, restless, nervous energy that had risen up inside him.

Across the street, a group of men in white undershirts sat on the marble stoop of a house, laughing, smoking, drinking. Music drifted over from a set of speakers, a deep bass beat that matched the pulse in Crowley’s throat. He breathed out a stream of smoke into the blue sky.

Half the houses on this block were boarded up. The door of the house where the men sat was covered in plywood with the street number spray painted on, but an air conditioner droned in one of the second story windows. All around, the entire block hummed with life, conversation and laughter flowing out from behind the blind windows of the brick houses. The smell of barbecue floated over on the breeze from a hidden yard or alleyway. Crowley thought of Aziraphale’s job, the wan look on his face when he described the process of reconstruction. _I salvage what I can, and then they bulldoze the rest._ But wasn’t this already a kind of salvage? Personal rather than architectural. A party on a Friday afternoon in July on a worn marble stoop, in a secret backyard. The beating thrum of music. The tacit understanding that you didn’t have to raize everything to the ground to just live and go on living. You didn’t have to start over in order to find joy.

Aziraphale returned from the CVS clutching a small bag.

“Find everything you needed?” Crowley asked, starting the truck and pulling out into traffic.

“Ah, yes.” Aziraphale shifted the bag on his lap, flushed a deep scarlet. “I believe I did.”

Oh, Crowley thought. _Oh_. And the enormity of it hit him in the chest all at once. He felt shaky, his heart beat too quickly. The cigarette had been a bad idea. “Lab results come back?” he managed to ask against the rising tide of terror-excitement-want threatening to choke his breath.

“Yes,” Aziraphale’s throat clicked as he swallowed and it was only the obvious, shaking vulnerability in his voice that allowed Crowley to push down his own exhilaration and nerves. “My viral load is still undetectable. Doctor’s blessing, or as near to it as we’ll get.”

“I haven’t—” Crowley managed, because Aziraphale ought to know. “I haven’t in a really long time. Usually I just stick to the other stuff.”

Aziraphale flashed a smile at him, demure, but a little salacious. Like he was about to impart a dirty secret. It twisted in Crowley’s gut like the moment of weightlessness in flight right before a steep descent. “It’s been a long time for me too. But I’m sure we’ll manage.” Doubt crossed his face like the tendril of a cloud. “That is, as long as you still want—”

Crowley ran a red light and Aziraphale either didn’t notice, or entirely forgot to scold him for it.

“Yeah,” Crowley said, mouth dry, fumbling around the shape of the words. “I still want to. What kind of a question is that? Of course I still want to.”

Aziraphale’s hand returned to his thigh. For all that his touch had driven Crowley mad earlier, it was oddly grounding now. A soothing, gentle reassurance. A reminder they were in this together. “Good,” Aziraphale said. “But dinner first.”

***

They walked along the brick promenade of the harbor. Crowley’s shirt stuck to his back with sweat. It was after seven in the evening and it was still hot, so hot. The air was thick and humid. A breeze lifted his hair, carried with it the brackish scent of the harbor water. Aziraphale’s hand squeezed his gently, soft and a bit damp with sweat. 

Before dinner, back at the hotel, Aziraphale had set the CVS bag down on the bed, fixed his bow tie in the mirror in the entryway.

Crowley gave his own face—worn, lined, scarred—a scowl in the same mirror, then moved to the bathroom to touch up his lipstick and rouge.

A knock on the door. Aziraphale came quietly into the room.

Crowley had tensed, waiting for Aziraphale to say something about the foundation, the blush, the red hue that he was about to apply to his lips. (The unwanted flash of a memory from earlier this summer: _If you didn’t dress like that, no one would notice anything different about you…_ )

But instead Aziraphale had stepped into his personal space, taken the tube of lipstick from Crowley’s fingers and asked. “May I?”

Crowley had nodded and then Aziraphale’s fingers were on his face, holding his chin gently and tilting it this way and that in the low, flattering light of the wall sconces in the bathroom. Aziraphale traced the flat of the lipstick along Crowley’s bottom lip with steady, deliberate, concentration. Crowley had a sudden pang of sympathy for all the ruined antiques Aziraphale spent his days touching up. How could old enameled washbasins and stained glass windows and 17th century crockery stand this level of care? Crowley felt like it might shatter him into a million pieces, and he wasn’t nearly as breakable as pottery or glass.

“Eyeliner?” Aziraphale asked and it took Crowley an embarrassing second or two for the words to filter in past the warm press of Aziraphale’s hand, still cupping the side of his face.

“Don’t…don’t usually bother. I mean,” Crowley gestured at the left side of his face, tried to laugh, but Aziraphale didn’t laugh with him. Aziraphale’s face was solemn, his eyes were burning. 

“Humor me?” Aziraphale asked, although it felt closer to a command than a request. Wordlessly, Crowley handed over a black pencil from the bottom of his makeup bag. And then Aziraphale was stepping even further into his space, insinuating himself between Crowley’s thighs, reaching up to run a gentle hand across the head of the striking snake, the ugliest part of Crowley’s scar.

“Close your eye,” Aziraphale murmured.

Crowley blinked once at him, did as he was told.

It was easier then, in the darkness, to let Aziraphale touch him, to let a thumb smooth over the soft skin of his eyelid, followed by the press of the pencil.

“Eyeshadow?” Aziraphale asked.

“In the bag. I hardly ever use it. It’s so old, it must be all caked and lumpy.”

Aziraphale’s hands disappeared off his face, but Crowley kept his eye closed, listened to the sound of rustling, to the snap of a plastic container opening.

“It’s a lovely color, doesn’t look too lumpy. Shall I?”

Crowley didn’t care all that much about what he looked like under his glasses. But Aziraphale clearly wanted Crowley to want to wear eyeshadow. Or perhaps what he wanted was not for Crowley to wear eyeshadow, but for Crowley to allow him to apply it. Aziraphale was frequently a complete mystery but occasionally he was almost charmingly transparent. The tremulous pressure of his fingers on Crowley’s chin felt like another apology—for their awful conversation in the car after the stop at the gas station, and for more than that too. For the past thirty years of silence, for never visiting in the hospital, for never calling, for a thousand other slights of childhood and adulthood. His touch traced the shape of a declaration that Crowley knew he might never be brave enough to say out loud. 

“Darling?” Aziraphale asked, and Crowley realized he hadn’t answered the question.

“Yeah, uh, sure. Go for it.”

Aziraphale’s fingers smoothed over his unblemished cheek, the light whisper of a brush on his closed eyelid.

(A memory rose out of the depths, tangled with Aziraphale’s touch. The dry air of the high school, the artificial lemon smell of the urinal cakes layered over the funk of old piss, the ache of fresh bruises as he covered them with foundation in front of the cracked mirror in the boys bathroom. Then Aziraphale’s fingers curling around his face in exactly the same way they were now, Aziraphale taking the foundation brush, clearly trying to be gentle as he daubed over the bruises. It had ached all the same.

Aziraphale hadn’t stopped at the foundation. He had dug in Bee’s makeup kit, had pulled out lipstick and eyeliner. He hadn’t asked in words, but Crowley had nodded _yes_. Aziraphale hadn’t kissed him, he wouldn’t—not for another two months anyway—but he had stood there and cradled Crowely’s face in his hands and ran the eyeshadow, clumsy and dark, around Crowley’s eyes. Aziraphale hadn’t kissed him, but, after touching the red nub of the lipstick to Crowley’s mouth he had brought it, slowly, to his own.)

“Open your eye,” Aziraphale said. “What do you think?”

Crowley blinked at himself in the mirror. The effect was dramatic and shocking. If he covered the left side of his face, as he did now with one broad palm, he could have been in his twenties again.

“Looks…good.” Crowely said, surprised despite himself.

“Let me see.” Aziraphale’s strong hands settled on Crowley’s shoulders. His eyes ran over his face appraisingly.

“I liked it,” Crowley blurted out, helpless with Azirahphale’s hands on him.

“Liked what, dear?” Aziraphale asked absently as his hands crept up Crowley’s neck to settle on either side of his face, stroking.

“All of it. The drive here, together. The movie. The—the clinic. I liked being there with you. Being there for you.”

Aziraphale’s hands stilled. “I liked it too,” he said.

Something large and overwhelming was rising up in Crowley’s throat. “Thank you.”

“Whatever for?” Aziraphale’s hands were moving again, smoothing down his cheeks, the pressure of his fingers on the left side of Crowley’s face indistinct through layers of scarring, but unquestionably, unbearably gentle.

“For doing my makeup. For taking me here. For trusting me.”

Aziraphale inhaled sharply, but didn’t say anything in return, just gently stroked over the scar on Crowley’s face. Crowley leaned into it.

“Shall we get dinner?” Aziraphale asked, an indeterminate amount of time later.

“Right, yeah, ‘course…” Crowley groped on the counter for his sunglasses, but Aziraphale stayed his hand.

“Leave them?” he asked. “If you don’t mind.”

Crowley swallowed. “I don’t mind.”

***

The sun was setting behind the city. It fell on the harbor and turned the low waves a glittering gold. Crowley was so used to the tint of the glasses it was odd, now, to go about without them. The whole world seemed more vibrant, full of color, but maybe that was just the effect of Aziraphale walking next to him, holding his hand loosely in his own. The bars across the cobbled street from the hotel were all growing steadily more crowded. The sound of men and women laughing and talking drifted across the street, but it barely registered. Crowley felt almost as though he and Aziraphale were in their own world, alone together in the perfect summer evening. As they walked along the brick promenade that ran next to the harbor, the sun caught Aziraphale’s hair, turned it, too, lovely and golden. Across the water, the neon red Domino sugar sign flickered on and was reflected on the harbor, reflected in the blue pools of Aziraphale’s eyes. 

They settled at a restaurant with outdoor seating overlooking the harbor. Aziraphale had been here before.

“What would you recommend?” Crowley asked. Aziraphale relinquished his hand to pick up a menu. Crowley flexed his fingers and mourned the loss. Ridiculous.

“Well, all of the seafood is good.” Aziraphale had fished his reading glasses out of his pocket, looked at Crowley over the top of the frames. Crowley thought he might die here, melted into a confused puddle of longing by the sticky mid-Atlantic humidity, by Aziraphale’s fussy little bow tie and glasses, by the measured intensity of his blue gaze.

“Order for me?” Crowley asked weakly. Aziraphale’s lips curled up into an indulgent smile and oh, Crowley was absolutely going to die, there was no way he was going to make it through dinner like this, not with that smile, not with the memory of Aziraphale’s hands all over his face, not with the knowledge of the CVS bag lying on the bed back at the hotel. He wasn’t going to survive the way Aziraphale was looking at him, like if Crowley let slip what he had very nearly said outside the theater, Aziraphale might very well say it back to him.

The first course arrived—oysters resting in the cradle of their hard defensive shells, splayed open to their soft and fleshy interiors. Crowley felt a sympathetic twinge of kinship with them under Aziraphale’s careful regard. They were arranged on a bed of ice with lemon wedges and tabasco set off to the side.

“I’ve never had an oyster,” Crowley observed. It was the sort of fancy, expensive food he never went in for. He had never seen the point.

“Oh my dear,” Aziraphale murmured, “there’s hardly anything on this earth as truly delightful as a fresh oyster. Let me introduce you.”

Aziraphale showed him how to pick up the shell, tip it back, suck out the quick, slimy thing inside. Crowley watched Aziraphale’s throat move, heard the small moan of delight as he swallowed and thought. _This is it. This is how it ends. I won’t even die unhappy._

“You can put the lemon or tabasco or other flavorings on it if you like,” Aziraphale was saying, “but when they are truly fresh, I’m partial to having them plain. And these are straight from the Chesapeake, as fresh as can be. Go on then.” He held one of the shells out between his thumb and forefinger. Helpless, Crowley closed his lips around it, met Aziraphale’s eyes as his fingers tipped it between his lips. The oyster slid down his throat, unexpectedly salty, reminiscent of something else entirely. Aziraphale reached out a thumb, swiped it against Crowley’s lower lip to catch where some of the juice from the shell had dribbled down Crowley’s chin. His thumb came away smudged with Crowley’s red lipstick. Aziraphale sucked it into his mouth anyway, an absentminded sort of gesture, all the more obscene for how uncalculated it appeared to be.

Crowley didn’t know how he survived the rest of dinner, although a smokey cocktail, dusted at the rim with the old bay spice that was ubiquitous in this city, probably helped. Aziraphale himself drank only water, sipping at it delicately between bites of his salad—an uncharacteristic choice of order.

“Desert?” Crowley asked when the waiter came by to take their plates.

“Only if you’d like my dear,” Aziraphale was dabbing at his mouth with his napkin, a hint of a blush rising high on his cheeks. “I’m avoiding anything heavy tonight.”

The implication in Aziraphale’s statement, plain as could be, hit Crowley all at once. It all came crashing back to Crowley, the CVS bag, the massive white expanse of the bed waiting for them in the ostentatiously fancy hotel, Aziraphale’s eyes twinkling with mirth and no small amount of heat.

“Second thought, no desert,” Crowley said, throat dry. “Let’s get out of here.” 

***

Crowley thought it might be frantic, when they made it back to the hotel room. Instead it was slow, languorous, suffused with warmth from the day. Crowley didn’t mind at all. In fact, he thought he might be content to stand like this forever, lips sliding together careful and reverent in the entryway of their very fancy hotel room, Aziraphale’s arms draped around his shoulders, his own hands kneading deep into the flesh of Aziraphale’s hips. He would have been happy to stay there forever, except there was something Aziraphale wanted. There was something Aziraphale hadn’t granted himself in twenty years and now was trusting Crowley to do for him.

Crowley trembled with that trust as his hands worked gently, first at Aziraphale’s tie, then at the buttons of his shirt, slipping them free one by one.

“You don’t have to be so—” Aziraphale’s voice caught. He looked over Crowley’s shoulder at the window where they had pulled the gauzy white curtains shut. “—gentle with me. You don’t have to take such care.”

“‘Course I do,” Crowley said, steering Aziraphale towards the bed then kneeling to unlace his shoes.

When he stood again, Aziraphale was already shirtless.

“Come here,” Aziraphale said, opening his arms, so Crowley went.

***

“I don’t want it to be bad,” Crowley said into the softness of Azirphale’s mouth, some time later, bracketed by the warmth of Aziraphale’s naked thighs. His fingers, already sticky with lube, trembled against his hip.

“Oh, my darling,” Aziraphale said, carding his hands through Crowley’s hair with such gentleness that Crowley had to close his eye at the touch. “Why ever would it be bad?”

“It’s just,” Crowley kissed him again, a light press of lips. “It’s just it's been twenty years, it’s almost like your first time all over again...I want...I want it to be special.”

“My first time?” Aziraphale’s grey blue eyes were amused. “My first time, I was so drunk I could hardly stand, he didn’t use nearly enough lube, and the next day I had to sit on a hard plastic chair next to Gabriel for hours on end. It can’t be worse than that.”

Crowely stiffened, he couldn’t help it. Aziraphale noticed and cupped his face in the palm of his hands. “It’s fine, it was a long time ago. I just meant, I don’t believe in first times being special.”

“I do,” Crowley said. He didn’t say, _it could have been me._ He didn’t say, _I would have made it special._

Aziraphale must have seen some of it on his face anyway. He sighed and drew a thumb across the seam of Crowley’s lips, pushed it in just a little until Crowley could taste Aziraphale’s skin on the tip of his tongue. “I really enjoy sex,” Aziraphale said. “And I especially like it like this. Being fucked. There’s no other feeling like it in the world. I’m not going to let anything that happened in the past take this away from me. From us.”

“And if it’s too much, you’ll tell me to stop?”

“Yes.”

***

Later, as they lay together, naked and sweaty and tangled in the sheets, Crowley looked over at Aziraphale, head resting in a puddle of white curls on the pillowcase, and Aziraphale looked back at him with an impish smile, both well fucked and impossibly fond. Crowley’s breath caught in his throat.

Once, a squirrel had gotten trapped in the rafters of Crowley’s house. It had scurried around up there, banging on the ceiling, chewing on the electrical wires, and thrashing against the underside of the roof hard enough to dislodge shingles. The squirrel had made an awful racket, caused nearly five hundred dollars worth of damage, and Crowley had spent half a day crawling around the eaves with long leather gardening gloves, a pole, and a bucket, trying to get it out alive. It felt like a similar scene was unfolding now, inside his chest, except maybe the squirrel had lived there this whole time, taken up residence sometime in high school and placidly snoozed through three decades, only to awaken with a vengeance under the calm, affectionate weight of Aziraphale’s gaze. Aziraphale looked up at Crowley from the mussed bedsheets, a pink mark blooming just under his jaw from where Crowley’s teeth had fastened and held as he had pushed, for the first time, inside the warmth of Aziraphale’s body.

“My darling,” Aziraphale had said as his thighs came up to tighten around Crowley’s hips. Crowley had been nervous. It had been a long time for him too. He had thought, absurdly, that he wouldn’t remember how it was done, but his body remembered. His body had rocked to meet Aziraphale’s like the slight waves of the harbor rocked against the pier below their window, gentle and sure. Aziraphale had buried his hands in Crowley’s hair and bit at the lobe of his ear, still slightly sore from having been so recently re-pierced, and it had been so good, better than anything Crowley had any right to expect from life. It had been the singular best sex Crowley had ever experienced and simultaneously, it felt so familiar, like they had been fucking one another for years, for decades, although that wasn’t right, it wasn’t fucking, it was—

 _Don’t think it, don’t you dare think it_ , Crowley told himself, but it was impossible; he couldn’t think of it in any other way. He couldn’t think of it at all, except to think of it as making love.

Crowley had moved inside Aziraphale until motion itself lost all meaning, until it felt instead like they were tangled so closely together they could be one creature, not two. And then Aziraphale had sighed into Crowley’s mouth, dropped his hand to run over the swell of Crowley’s backside and between his cheeks, fingers pushing ever so slightly into the give of Crowley’s body, and it had completed some kind of electric circuit Crowley hadn’t known existed. Trapped exquisitely between filing and being filled, of having Aziraphale and being had by him, Crowley had cried out and tumbled over the edge. Aziraphale had held him through it, held him until the shaking subsided, and had not stopped Crowley when he slipped free, pulled the condom off himself, and immediately bent to take Aziraphale between his lips, swallowing greedily, until his mouth flooded with the bitter, delicate salt of a Chesapeake oyster.

“Come up here,” Aziraphale had said, eventually, tugging on Crowley’s hair, and they lay catching their breath together as the drunken sounds of revelers drifted up from the cobblestoned street below.

Aziraphale smiled at him, backlit by the street lamps and the halo of his white curls and all of Crowley’s wiring was shot. It would be much more than five hundred dollars worth of damage to get the squirrel out now, and anyway, the squirrel was not going anywhere. It was essentially, hopelessly, part of the house.

“Alright?” Crowley asked eventually, not trusting his voice.

“Wonderful,” Aziraphale said, “absolutely wonderful. That was absolutely transcendent. But my dear—” a slight frown appeared between Aziraphale’s blue eyes. “You’re not worried?”

“Nah,” Crowley could still taste Aziraphale in his mouth. Aziraphale’s hand lay on Crowley’s bare hip. Crowley barely felt like he could speak against the gentle pressure of it. But Aziraphale looked like he needed reassuring, and he could do that, he could do that until the world ended and then some. “I liked your doctor. I trust her,” Crowley said. “And besides—” Crowley hesitated, then threw caution to the wind. “—besides, I’m not afraid of being with you. I’ve never been afraid of being with you.”

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, something sad and warning in his voice. His hand moved from Crowley’s hip to card once, gently, through Crowley’s long hair, then dropped to the bed between them. “I know.”

Crowley looked away from Aziraphale’s gaze, lay on his back and stared up at the white expanse of the hotel ceiling, willing the words for what he was feeling to dissipate on the breeze blowing in from the open window, willing the frantically thrashing rodent in his chest to just _calm down already_. But it was useless, the moment was too perfect; Aziraphale’s eyes, when he darted a glance to the side, were too kind. 

"You should stay," Crowley said, before he could stop himself, before that other thing, vulnerable and wanting and true, could claw itself out of his throat. "You should take Gabe's job offer. You should stay." 

Aziraphale's brow furrowed. His mouth parted and Crowley was abruptly struck by an icy bolt of fear at what might come tumbling out of that perfect cupid’s bow. 

"Don’t—don't say anything just yet. Just. Just think about it.”

With effort, Crowley extracted himself from the cradle of the bed, struggled into his jeans and stood, patted the pockets in the half-light looking for the crumpled cardboard box and lighter. All the time he could feel Aziraphale’s eyes on him like a weight.

“Going...” Crowley cleared his throat, gestured towards the balcony. “Going for a smoke...you mind?”

“Of course not, my dear.”

The air on the balcony was humid and warm. A fishy smell drifted up from the harbor, cut through by a whiff of burnt sugar. The reflection of the Domino sugar sign, lit up red across the harbor from the balcony, wavered on the water’s glassy surface.

Crowley put the cigarette between his lips but didn’t light it for a long time, lost in visions of the past and future as the dark water lapped at the pilings below and the shouts of revelers—making the most of their intoxicated and fleeting present—drifted over the gentle waves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I treasure all your comments and I am sorry about my backlog in comment replies. Suffice to say it has been a busy few weeks in the real world. For that same reason, it may be more than a week before the next chapter is posted, but never fear, it’s coming. We’ve got a brunch to get to!

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [ on tumblr](https://princip1914.tumblr.com)!
> 
> This fic is usually archive locked, as is all my E rated work. I unlock it when I post a new chapter, but I lock it between updates and it will ultimately be locked when finished (this is for my own privacy and peace of mind). If you want to keep following the fic, please make an ao3 account--it's a very quick and easy process--so that you're able to read it once it is archive locked!


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